


Talking of Michelangelo

by athaleablaire



Series: Up From These Depths [1]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan, The Trials of Apollo - Rick Riordan
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Depression, Eating Disorders, Fluff, Graphic Description, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sad with a Happy Ending, Slow Build, Weight Gain, Weight Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:08:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 40,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25721098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athaleablaire/pseuds/athaleablaire
Summary: Nico hasn't been the same since the jar. Memories of the past year won't leave his head, causing him to seek out a dangerous coping mechanism. As if that wasn't enough, he can't ignore the stupid crush he's developing on Will Solace, as much as he would like to. Nico only knows one thing for certain: he doesn't want Will finding out. He isn't ready to trust him. At least, not yet.Takes place after Blood of Olympus and the three days in the infirmary. Some details of time and people do not fit exactly to canon.
Relationships: Nico di Angelo/Will Solace
Series: Up From These Depths [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2122011
Comments: 54
Kudos: 335





	1. I'm Not a Baby

**Author's Note:**

> *Trigger warning*  
> Talk of eating disorders, weight gain, weight loss, purging, vomiting, passing out, body image

Nico swiped his hand across his lips as he walked out of the bathroom. He couldn’t stand the feeling of acid on his permanently cracked lips and so he always took the liberty of getting rid of it the minute he could. This routine was definitely the least glamorous part of his day, but it needed to be done, so he buried away any shreds of pride and conscience he had left and did it without so much as a grimace. He reached into his pocket for a piece of gum, unwrapping it while actively ignoring the nails he had chewed to nubs. Mint exploded in his mouth. He wished he could brush his teeth instead, but Will would lose his mind if Nico was late to another check-up. 

It was a nice day, but Nico couldn’t spare the headspace to savor it. As he crossed through the courtyard enclosed by all the cabins, his brain jumped back and forth between the normal panic he felt going to the doctor because of his body and the added panic he felt because the doctor just had to be Will-fucking-Solace. If Nico could erase the overwhelming crush he was developing on the boy, he would do so in a heartbeat. He had spent countless nights lying in bed trying to talk himself out of liking Will and nothing had ever come of it. If anything, his feelings had gotten stronger. The more he thought about ignoring Will, it turned out, the more he ended up thinking about how pretty he thought his eyes were and how warm Will’s smile made him feel and how the other boy’s laugh made him weak in the knees. Nico bit his lip even thinking about it now. He was almost certain that Will didn’t swing that way, and even if he did, no one, especially someone as put-together as Will, wanted to date someone who spent a good chunk of their time throwing up in a bathroom. On the other and more terrifying hand, Will was far too keen for his own good, and Nico didn’t want him connecting too many dots. 

Nico absentmindedly pushed his hand across his stomach, smiling in a bittersweet way when he felt how prominent his hip bones were even through jeans and a sweatshirt. 

Will was waiting for him on the porch of the Big House. Nico could’ve sworn he saw Will’s eyebrows shoot up for a second when he saw him before settling back into their normal position. 

“Was starting to think you were gonna miss another one of our appointments,” Will said, smiling. 

Nico shrugged, rocking back on his heels. “I figured you would come chase me down anyway, and I don’t feel like putting myself through that today.”

Will’s eyes glimmered. “You’re right. I would’ve.” He stood up, brushing off his jeans as he did so. “Well, let’s get started.” He turned to go back into the house, but glanced back over his shoulder before moving to the threshold. 

“And you might as well spit your gum out while we’re outside.”

Nico padded around the Big House as he followed Will to the infirmary. His nerves increased with each step he took. Nico hoped his tests didn’t betray how bad he felt, but he had little faith in his body. Will wasn’t dumb. Nico didn’t know why he held out hope that Will wouldn’t figure it out, but Will hadn’t figured it out yet. Getting anxious about it every time was exhausting. 

As he crossed into the exam room, he started to panic. The sound of the door closing behind Will made his mind go white. 

“You know the drill,” Will said as he rummaged through a nearby medical cabinet. Nico grimaced, but slid his shirt and sweatshirt over his head and sat on the exam table. Will turned back to him, a blood pressure cuff and a syringe kit clutched in his arms. 

“Pardon the mess,” Will started. Nico was glad he was too distracted by the cuff to look up at him and see his bony form. 

“Percy tried to train some kids on the climbing wall and thought the best way to do that was to make some of them race.” Will shook his head in disbelief. “Kids were running in and out all morning. Mostly burns, a few sprains. A kid from the Demeter cabin broke a couple ribs.”

“Ouch,” Nico said monotonously. His heart was hammering so hard against his sternum he thought he would have a heart attack.

Will grabbed his arm without warning. On instinct, Nico jerked back, slamming his elbow into the wall in the process. Will withdrew his hand almost as quickly. Nico wanted to kick himself. He couldn’t believe he had reacted like that. The ground was suddenly the most interesting thing in the world. When Nico risked a glance at Will, his eyes were wide with concern and shock. Nico felt his face flush, and he wanted nothing more than to break down into tears. He glanced out the window, willing himself to concentrate on the bright green trees. 

“Nico—”

He thrust his arm in Will’s direction. “Just do it.”

Will paused for a second, still staring at him, but then he took Nico’s arm without a word. Nico kept staring out the window, watching Will out of the corner of his eye. The corners of Will’s mouth turned down. Nico felt the cuff slide off his arm. 

“The adult cuff doesn’t fit,” Will said. He crossed the room and started rummaging in the cabinet again. 

“And?” Nico tried his best to feign ignorance. He ignored the cold sweat creeping across his skin. 

“I don’t know. With all the muscle you have from sword fighting the adult cuff should fit.” He shook his hair out of his eyes. “Plus, you’re a fourteen-year-old male over 5 feet.” His eyebrows scrunched together, and Nico’s heart somehow did a backflip and sank into his stomach at the same time. 

“You still training every day?”

Nico chose his words carefully, knowing it would be extremely detrimental to him if he told Will that he hadn’t trained since coming back from Greece. “Yes. I’ve taken a couple days off for some errands for my father, but that’s it.” 

He couldn’t read the expression on Will’s face. Will strapped the new cuff on his arm without saying anything. Nico couldn’t stand the feeling of his veins and arteries pulsing against the fabric. As the cuff inflated, his veins struggled to keep pushing. He felt the trapped blood pooling in his lower arm. His fingers were inflating like balloons, swelling until the skin was stretched so tightly he knew it would burst. Bile rose in his throat, and he struggled to swallow. He blinked. His hand was normal. His head was making things up. Again.

“That’s weird,” Will muttered, clearly to himself. Nico looked up at him. He was staring at the dial of the cuff, a confused look in his eyes. 

“What is?”

Will shook his head slightly. “Your blood pressure. It’s reading 90/50.”

The hairs on the back of Nico’s neck stood up. “Is that bad?”

“It’s low,” Will explained. “I mean, normal blood pressure is anywhere between 120/80 and 90/60.” 

A coppery taste flooded Nico’s mouth. “Maybe the cuff is messed up.”

Will paused. The sound of Velcro being pulled apart echoed in the room. “Maybe. I don’t think it was this low last time.” A smile briefly crossed his face. “You know, pregnancy can cause low blood pressure. Any chance—” 

Nico kicked him in the knee before he could finish. Will laughed, reaching for the syringe kit. Nico wished his foot had done more damage. “Easy, Death Boy. It was just a joke.”

Nico bristled. “How many times have I told you not to call me that?” Will just smiled and took Nico’s arm again. As the cooling sensation of the alcohol swab slid across his arm, Nico couldn’t help but stare at the mess of golden hair on Will’s head. In the handful of times Nico had been in the infirmary since the end of the war, he had never seen it look brushed or slightly put together. It was probably a side effect of being the best healer the camp had, hence being constantly busy. It was unfair that Will’s unkempt hair somehow managed to look majestic while Nico’s just looked like a mop even when he tried to take care of it. Every time Nico saw Will’s hair he wanted to reach out and run his fingers through it. To feel Will’s perfect hair threaded in his fingers and to tangle his own wiry hands in it and to hear Will—

“And… done.” Nico blinked, dragging himself out of his daydream. Will was taping some gauze to his arm. A few vials of blood were resting on the table beside him. Nico’s face heated up, but Will was too busy with his arm to notice. Will swung his stethoscope off his neck. The cold material pressed to Nico’s chest was oddly grounding. 

“Breathe in.” Nico did. “And out.” Nico did that too. “Awesome. Now I’ll just get your weight and then you can go back to sulking in your cabin.” Nico froze for a minute. He knew he would be weighed at some point today—Will insisted on it every time he came in—but he always hoped he’d forget about it. He never did. Nico’s skin was clammy as he slid off the table and hobbled over to the scale. His heart was pushing blood through his body so hard that his ears hurt. His head pounded. 

Will slid the weights over one by one. The bar dipped as it expected more weight, and Nico hated that he felt a twinge of pride hidden beneath the disgust. Will kept pushing it lower and lower, his face growing more and more concerned as he did. The scale finally settled on 103. 

Will frowned. “You’re 5’3, right?” Nico nodded, stepping off the scale even though Will didn’t tell him to. “You should be at least 112. You were at 108 last time.” He gave Nico a suspicious glance.

“You haven’t been shadow traveling, have you?”

Nico’s expression darkened and he shook his head. The last time he had tried was nearly two weeks ago, and even though he had only tried to go across his cabin, he had almost ended up in Hell and had ended up so weak that he slept for 16 blissful hours afterwards. 

“Maybe it’s genetic,” he muttered. He was already reaching for his clothes. “Bianca and my mom were always thin. And Hades—”

“Hades hangs out in a lightless world infested by skeletons,” Will interrupted. “I wouldn’t exactly say he’s a model specimen for what his terrestrial son should look like.” Nico could almost hear his father laughing. 

“Whatever,” Nico muttered. His sweatshirt was back on, but he still had to make a conscious effort to keep his teeth from chattering.

“You’re still eating at the dining pavilion with everyone, right?”

Anger flashed through Nico’s body. He crossed his arms over his chest, glaring at the other boy. “Why does it matter to you? So what if I skip a few meals to train a little more? I have to be able to defend myself.”

Will had to be the only person in the world who wasn’t in any way deterred by Nico’s anger in any meaningful way because he stepped forward until he was only a foot away from him. Nico hated that Will was taller than him, and he doubly hated that all he could think about when Will was this close was reaching forward and kissing his stupid face. The anger he had had seconds before drained out of him as though someone had pulled a stopper. All of a sudden he was a little kid again, just like the little kid that Percy had rescued from Westover Hall who still played with Mythomagic cards. Nico took a disoriented step back.

“Just because you want to train doesn’t mean you get to not eat.” Will crossed his arms. “You need calories and nutrients to build muscle and stuff anyway, so—”

“Oh, spare me the medical talk, Solace. I know how to take care of myself.”

Will blinked in annoyance, but his expression remained calm. “I never said you didn’t.”

“Yeah, well, if you didn’t believe it you wouldn’t drag me in here twice a week to make sure I’m not dead.”

Will smiled, his eyes dancing over Nico’s face. “Has it ever crossed your mind that I might care about you, Nico?”

Nico’s heart short-circuited. All coherent thought left his mind and he was left as a stuttering mess of bashfulness and rage. He wanted out and he wanted out now. Will was blocking his path. 

He swore under his breath. Without thinking, he shoved Will’s chest, pushing the other boy back a couple feet. The minute his bony fingers made contact with Will’s chest he regretted it, partially because he hated how strong Will’s chest was and also because Will was going to get mad. Nico closed his eyes so he couldn’t see Will’s disappointed expression and took a deep breath. When he opened them, Will was staring at the floor. 

“Look, I’m not a baby,” Nico muttered. All the poison his voice had held a minute ago had left. “I don’t need you hovering all the time.” Before Will could respond, Nico had stormed out of the room. As he raced down the steps of the Big House, he felt tears pricking at his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love, love, love reading comments so please leave them!


	2. Nico di Angelo, huh?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Trigger warning*  
> Mentions of ill effects due to eating disorders.

Will had been staring at the paper in front of him for so long that the numbers were swimming off of it. When he blinked, they settled down for a minute or two before they started floating again. Maybe he hoped that the longer he stared at them the better the numbers would lend themselves to interpretation. Maybe they would even change. He definitely didn’t want to keep looking at them. He didn’t like what they were telling him. Everything was low. White blood cell count, red blood cell count, platelets, glucose, calcium, sodium, potassium, electrolytes. Based on all the numbers in front of him, he was surprised Nico had looked as put-together today as he did. At least now his blood pressure made sense. So did the low heart rate Will had originally attributed to Nico just being an in-shape guy. Will sighed and set his attention back to the top of the page.

A book landed in his lap. It took him a few seconds to figure out how it had gotten there. He looked up and saw Lou Ellen standing by his bunk.

“What are you doing here?” he asked wearily, rubbing at his eyes. The pattern of the page was burned into his retinas. 

Lou Ellen sat down at the foot of his bed. “Checking on you. Certain people in your cabin are concerned that you’ve spent multiple hours sitting here and reading over the same papers again and again, so I was summoned to see if you were okay.” Will glanced across his cabin. Kayla was staring at him with her arms crossed. He would have to be sure to tell her not to snitch on him later.

Will set the papers down next to him and sat up. For the first time he realized how stiff his neck and back were. Sitting in the same position for that long had made his body complain. He rolled out his neck, feeling each one of his vertebrae realign themselves. “I’m fine,” he promised. “Just looking at this case.”

Before he could stop her, Lou Ellen leaned over and took the papers away. Will made a sound of protest, but Lou Ellen held a hand up to silence him. Her eyes flicked over the papers, growing more confused the longer she looked at them. 

“Nico di Angelo, huh?”

Will snatched the papers back. He tried to ward off the growing heat in his cheeks, but he wasn’t having much success. He hoped it was too dim for Lou Ellen to see.

It wasn’t. She looked over at him and grinned the same mischievous grin she made when she turned the Roman soldiers into pigs. “Really? Nico di Angelo is the guy you have a crush on?”

Will scowled. “I do not have a crush on Nico. He’s just a patient, and a friend, and something is up with him.”

Lou Ellen tilted her head to the side. “I dunno,” she said in a drawn-out tone. “I’ve never seen you glower at the same papers for three hours over any other patient.”

“Yeah, well, usually the problems are easier, like a broken bone or a concussion or…” He was rambling like an idiot and he knew it. He let the sentence trail off, rubbing his forehead. 

“Okay, so what’s wrong with the totally average patient named Nico di Angelo?” Lou Ellen gestured to the pages. “There’s too much medical mumbo jumbo on there for me to understand it.”

Will shook his head. “I can’t tell you. Doctor-patient confidentiality. It wouldn’t be fair to Nico.” He glanced down at a page next to his leg and stared at the startling numbers. “Even if I wanted to break that and tell you, I couldn’t, because I don’t know what’s wrong.” He looked out the window to his left, focusing on how the moonlight draped over the trees nearby. 

“Suffice to say that it can’t be anything good.”

Lou Ellen’s smile had faded a little. The mischievous, quirky smile that Will was used to seeing on her face had changed into something a little more sympathetic. She reached over and put her hand on his, and to his surprise he closed his hand around it 

“He’ll be okay.” Her voice reminded her of honey, and for a minute he thought Piper had entered the room. “He’s been through a lot, but you of all people know how tough he is. And if there’s a medical problem, there’s no doubt in my mind that you’ll get to the bottom of it.”

Will smiled a bit. “When did you become good at consoling people?”

She shrugged. “You looked in need of my secret talents.” He rolled his eyes. 

The two of them sat in silence for a bit. The hustle and bustle of the cabin started to increase as campers came in to settle down for the night. A few of them glanced at Lou Ellen, but no one said anything. Seeing her in the cabin with Will wasn’t anything new. No one had ever cared enough to employ the ‘no campers of opposite genders alone in a cabin’ rule. Will had needed to see her more and more since the war had ended to distract himself from one stress or another, and consequently it had become rarer to see the two of them apart than together when Will wasn’t working. Rumors that they were dating cropped up quickly. Will didn’t know why, but he also didn’t really care. The only people who knew that Will didn’t like girls in the slightest were Lou Ellen and Cecil. He had almost told Nico a dozen times, but he always bit his tongue and swallowed his words. Will didn’t think Nico would care, really hoped and prayed that he wouldn’t, but Nico was old-fashioned and seemed to brush Will off at every chance he got, so—

“Let’s go out on the porch and chat,” Lou Ellen suggested, pulling at Will’s arm before he could say no. “It’s less loud out there.” The mischievous grin was back on her face, and Will didn’t really want to find out what that would mean for him. He let Lou Ellen drag him out the door anyway, but not before he sent up a silent prayer to the Gods while being pulled through the threshold. 

Will didn’t like that his eyes went straight to the Hades cabin the minute it came into his view. He also didn’t like how hard it was to tear his eyes away from it. He really liked to think that he was just staring because he was worried about Nico, but even his head, which was so in denial about liking Nico that he had considered leaving camp for the school year, knew that wasn’t the reason. He really didn’t like that when he looked at the cabin he imagined Nico walking around inside without a shirt on. 

“Okay, spill.” He looked at Lou Ellen, expecting her to elaborate, but she didn’t. He supposed she didn’t need to. The twisting sensation in his stomach let him know what she wanted to hear. 

Will sighed. “Fine. You win. I like Nico.”

Lou Ellen smiled. “And how hard have you fallen this time? Tripped over a rock or dove off a cliff?”

He blushed and looked down at his feet. “So hard that when I went to listen to his heartbeat with my stethoscope today I had to resist the urge to ‘accidentally’ touch his chest a bit more than I needed to..” 

Lou Ellen started cackling. Will moaned and buried his face in his hands. “It’s not funny.”

She appeared to be having a tough time reigning herself back in. “On the contrary, I don’t think you realize how hilarious this is.”

Will moaned again. “I don’t know what to do,” he said into his hands. “I’ve never felt like this before, as cliché as that sounds. Whenever I see him I short-circuit and have to figure out how to stop myself from doing anything stupid before he notices that I can’t function.”

“Yeah. That sounds a lot like a crush.”

He groaned. “Where’s the Lou Ellen from two minutes ago? The one that was actually comforting?”

She grinned. “She’s gone. This Lou Ellen just wants to laugh at her best friend while he experiences the joy of a crush.”

Will leaned his head back against the wall of the cabin. He loved Lou Ellen, he really did, but her goofiness often got in the way of more serious conversations. “I know what a crush is, genius. I need actual advice here. I can’t keep treating him if I’m gonna be weird every time I see him.”

Lou Ellen shrugged. “Can you not just… tell him?” 

Will shook his head rapidly. “He’s the most defensive and least outwardly emotional person I’ve ever met. If I tell him anything, he’ll run. “

“You know,” she started, picking at her nails. “I’ve seen the way he looks at you. You may be surprised at his response.”

Will sighed. “I don’t know. You should’ve seen the way he acted today when I said I cared about him. He bolted out of the Big House faster than I’ve ever seen anyone leave besides Chiron, and he has horse legs and horse speed.” His eyes trailed back over to Nico’s cabin. The light that had been on a minute ago was now off. “I don’t even know if he likes guys.” 

Lou Ellen looked over at him, turning to face him as she did so. Her eyes were sparkling, even in the dark. “Well. You never know until you try.”


	3. People Don't Miss Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Trigger warning*  
> Descriptions of intentionally limited calorie intake

Footsteps on the creaky wooden floor of the Hades cabin woke Nico up. Any sound these days could pull him out of sleep, even if it originated from something as simple as an owl hooting outside his cabin. The footsteps made his eyes shoot open, and the familiar flood of panic inundated his body. The wall faced him, but he didn’t dare roll over. His hand slid silently under his pillow, his fingers curling around the dagger he found there. The steps got louder. And louder.

Nico flipped out of bed and had the knife pressed to the neck of the intruder in seconds. His momentum sent the two of them tumbling to the ground. Nico had the other person pinned down in no time. The knife never left their neck. 

“Chill, dude, it’s me!” Nico’s eyes slowly adjusted to the dark. Jason was smiling up at him looking much less stressed than Nico thought he should be while having a knife pressed to his throat. Nico grumbled under his breath but pushed himself off Jason regardless. His head was pounding. Every part of him hurt. The stale taste of stomach acid coated his tongue. 

“Do you always sleep with a knife?” Jason asked, propping himself up on his elbows. Nico rolled his eyes as he crossed the room to grab a clean shirt. 

“When you get captured in Tartarus, let me know if you don’t sleep with one.” Jason chuckled from behind him. “Why are you here anyway? I thought you were gonna be at that island place for a couple more days.”

“You mean Tuvalu?” Jason pulled himself to his feet and leaned against the bunk adjacent to Nico’s. “I was over there for a bit, but the problem got sorted out pretty quick.” 

He looked past Nico, frowning a bit. “Of course, now I have to build a monument to the goddess of sea bounties in a mortal aquarium somehow, but that’s a problem for later.”

Nico flopped back onto his bed. “You promise them too much.”

Jason shrugged. “We couldn’t have won the war without them, so why shouldn’t they get honored?” He crossed his arms. “Speaking of honor and general welcoming, shouldn’t you be a little more excited to see your best friend back on short notice? I’m feeling rather unwelcomed, what with the knife and all.”

The smile plastered on Jason’s face made Nico want to throw a shoe at him. “You’re not my best friend.”

“Oh yeah? Then what am I?”

In all the weeks Nico had pondered this question, he had never been able to come up with a good, succinct answer. “You’re the guy Cupid made me tell my secrets to, and now you cling to me because you, like everyone else, don’t think I can take care of myself.”

Jason raised his eyebrows. “I’ve seen you back talk Gods, survive Tartarus, and split the ground in half. You don’t need me protecting you. Gods, you even terrify me half the time.”

Nico savored the twinge of pride the statement gave him. “Then why did you come here? You have Percy and Piper and Annabeth to hang out with, all of whom, might I add, wouldn’t threaten to slit your throat.”

“The knife keeps me on my toes,” Jason replied, grinning. “Kinda fun.”

Nico groaned. “Cut it out, Grace. What do you want?”

Jason sighed dramatically. “I just wanted to invite you to breakfast. It was Percy’s idea.”

Nico’s stomach seized. Anytime anyone mentioned food lately his body felt like it was convulsing. He hated how his mouth started to water just thinking about pancakes and eggs. He ignored the feeling, pushing away the nausea swimming through his veins. 

“We can’t even eat together.” Nico said, wishing he had a better reason to brush Jason off. “Is your plan to have us sit at five different tables and yell at each other?”

“Chiron already approved it. Turns out when you’re a war hero you can get away with a lot more.” Jason looked over at him, his face suddenly serious. “You know, if you’re worried about seeing Percy—”

“I’m not.” Nico glared at the bunk above him. Jason had somehow become even more annoying than Percy since the end of the war, which said a lot considering he wanted to slap Percy 8/10 times he saw him.

“Great, because you’re coming to breakfast with us.” Nico opened his mouth to protest, but Jason had grabbed him and pulled him out of bed before he could say anything. He struggled against his grip briefly, but Jason was stronger and bigger than him. The ground swayed under his feet when he stood up. Jason didn’t seem to notice Nico’s stumbling and dragged him out of the cabin without looking back. 

The sun was obnoxiously bright. The fact that Nico had spent all of his time inside coupled with how little energy he was running on made the world a wash of white. For a minute, he couldn’t see anything. Panic creeped into his chest. He heard Jason talking to him from somewhere far away. 

“Nico!” A voice that definitely was not Jason’s called out to him, and before he knew it, Nico was lying on the ground. At first he thought he had passed out, but then his eyes adjusted and he saw the unmistakable color of Percy’s hair by his shoulder. Percy had tackled him. 

“I haven’t seen you in so long!” Nico shoved at Percy’s shoulders, glowering. 

“You saw me last week.”

Percy rolled off of him, ruffling Nico’s hair as he did. “That’s a long time when you live in the same place as someone. I missed you.”

Nico rolled his eyes and hauled himself to his feet with the help of the wall of the Hades cabin. “People don’t miss me.” The few seconds he was able to lie down had helped knock the fuzziness out of his head. His headache, however, was there to stay. His chest hurt too. At least the world wasn’t a white blur anymore. 

Jason and Percy started off towards the dining pavilion, bickering and laughing along the way. A familiar pang of loneliness hit his chest before a hand landed on his shoulder. Nico turned to see Annabth smiling at him. He hadn’t noticed she was there before. 

“I apologize for Seaweed Brain,” she said as the two of them started to walk. “He’s been crazy since Jason got here.”

Nico scrunched his eyebrows together. “Didn’t he get here this morning?”

She nodded. “It’s been an interesting couple of hours.” A soft wind blew through the courtyard, tossing Annabeth’s pale hair over her shoulders. It wasn’t hard for Nico to see why Percy liked her so much even if he didn’t get it. A year ago, seeing Annabeth made Nico want to scream. Now he found himself appreciating her company. 

“We were starting to wonder if you were doing alright,” Annabeth said. “No one has seen you in a while and we thought maybe you had gone somewhere with your father or—” 

“Will’s seen me,” Nico interrupted. The minute the words had left his lips he regretted them. The corners of Annabeth’s lips curled up into a smile. Nico felt himself start to blush. 

“Will, huh?”

Nico stormed off without even trying to defend himself, grumbling under his breath as he tried to catch up to Jason and Percy. 

The pavilion was obnoxiously busy by the time they got there. Nico hadn’t thought to ask what time it was, but judging by how many people were eating, it was way earlier than Nico was used to getting up at. The crowd stressed him out. Not only would he have to figure out a way to get his body to eat something in front of the endlessly overbearing Jason and Percy, but he would have to make himself inconspicuous to dozens of prying eyes. The four of them sat down at the Poseidon table. Nico’s leg immediately started bouncing. He was glad Annabeth had sat the farthest away from him because she would have noticed that something was up in two seconds. Jason was on his right, but it would take him a couple minutes to figure out something was up. He hoped Jason would never notice. Nico’s throat already ached from trying not to cry. 

Relief seeped into his veins as Piper bounded over from the Aphrodite table. She put a hand on Nico’s shoulder and kissed Jason on the cheek. 

“Morning Nico.” Nico grumbled in response. He appreciated that she didn’t make any comments on him being out and about. 

Good thing Percy was there for backup. “We dragged him out into the sun,” he said proudly. Annabeth wacked him in the head with her napkin. 

“I would’ve joined in your efforts, but we had a bit of a situation in my cabin this morning.” Piper sat down on the other side of Jason. “Somehow, even though Drew is only here for a couple more days, she managed to scar a new camper.”

“She being mean again?”

Piper shook her head and took a sip of orange juice. “She gave the poor girl a makeover in her sleep.” She glanced over at Drew at table 10 who was laughing just as happily as ever. “The girl’s fine, she just looks a little… off.”

Nico shoveled a scoop of strawberries onto his plate, not really caring about the conversation in front of him. He had no intention of eating them. His head was screaming at him. For weeks he had tried to keep himself out of situations like this and had been mostly successful. Now, when faced with a plate of food, his mind rebelled. In that moment. Nico hated his friends. The strawberries reminded him of blood, the eggs of flesh. He poked at a clump of eggs with his fork and nearly gagged as it jiggled. Putting it in his body would be torture. His hand felt numb. The fork weighed a thousand pounds. 

When he couldn’t stand to look at it anymore, he looked out across the pavilion. None other than Will Solace was staring back at him. Nico dropped his eyes back to his place. Without much thought, he speared a strawberry and shoved it in his mouth. Instantly he was overwhelmed with the desire to spit it out, but he kept chewing, forcing it down until only the taste remained. His stomach growled in appreciation. His head told it to shut up. Nico just wanted to sleep. Glancing up again, Nico saw that Will was still staring at him. Nico wanted to throw a plate at him. He looked away again, deciding the floor was more comforting than Will’s face. The gray scar Nico had made three years ago was still there, taunting him. If his body had had something more than a strawberry to run on, he would have shadow travelled away. Maybe he would’ve summoned a skeleton for fun. 

“Nico?”

“Hm?” Nico turned back to his friends, slamming his knee into the underside of the table. Percy’s glass of blue coke fell into his lap. Nico’s face turned scarlet. “Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Percy muttered, dabbing at his crotch with a napkin. Nico wanted to dissolve. 

“You alright dude?” Jason asked. 

Nico stabbed another strawberry. “Yeah. I’m great.”


	4. Ever Tried Archery?

Nico really wished he could train for more than ten minutes at a time. Until today, he had forgotten how much he enjoyed slicing through dummies with swords and nearly shoving Percy and Jason over with just his strength. The two of them had dragged Nico out to the arena after lunch; it had been at least a week since Nico had been at all. He was dimly disappointed by his physical abilities, but he was still able to give Percy and Jason a run for their money. The sword felt good in his hands. He would’ve been happy to spar forever if his head hadn’t grown fuzzy. Watching the two of them from the sidelines as they tried to kill each other was significantly less fun. 

The only thing that made sitting out even remotely bearable was the fact that Will was training nearby at the archery range. Nico could count on one hand the number of times he had seen Will outside of the infirmary, so he hadn’t quite believed it was him until he heard Will laugh. He hadn’t taken his eyes off him since. In that time, he had been startled to see that Will was actually good at archery. He had definitely not expected him to be. Will wasn’t a fighter. He had told him that the day Nico had arrived back at camp. Aside from Gaea’s War, Nico had never even seen him on the battlefield. Fighting, Will had explained, was antithetical to his role as a doctor. Nico suspected that Will didn’t even like shooting arrows. And yet, somehow, he was good at it. Every arrow he shot hit the center of the target or really close to it. Nico hated that it made Will even more attractive.

He hadn’t talked to Will since the last time he went to the infirmary. He had almost walked over to the Big House multiple times, but every time he had talked himself out of it. He had no plan and was way too terrible at words to make anything up on the spot. Adding that to the fact that Nico knew he would melt the minute he saw Will meant that the encounter would not be a good one. His skin crawled as he thought of the idea he wished hadn’t caught his mind: crossing the field and kissing Will without a word. 

Nico ripped his eyes away from Will before he could think about anything too much and get himself into an awkward situation. Percy and Jason were still in the center of the arena, but now they seemed like they were bickering more than training. Nico was glad he wasn’t a part of their weird and constant competition. He knew deep down that if he had enough energy he could kick both their asses. Jason ruffled Percy’s hair, causing the other boy to knock his hand away and shove his shoulder. Jason poked at Percy’s stomach with the tip of his sword. Nico was sick of watching. He dug into his pocket and fished out a couple of almonds he had managed to stash there when he found out he was being forced to train. They were sliding down Nico’s throat before his brain could protest. He took a swig of Jason’s water to help them with the rest of the trip. Even if they didn’t actually give him energy, maybe he could trick himself. 

Percy’s eyes lit up as Nico approached. “Couldn’t stay away from us, huh?”

Nico spun his sword around in his hand, savoring how balanced and worn it felt. “You wish. I got sick of you bickering like an old married couple so I decided to come help settle the argument.” The tips of Percy’s ears turned red. 

“We do not bicker—”

“You’re on,” Jason interrupted. His sword glittered in the sun as he pulled it into a fighting stance. “Who do you want first?”

He shrugged. “Why not both of you?”

Percy grinned. “You’re so going down.”

Jason barely had time to laugh before Nico lunged for him. Nico could almost see the gears turning in his mind as his demigod reflexes kicked in. He blocked Nico’s first strike without a problem. Nico was momentarily taken aback by the sheer force behind Jason’s block, but the shock turned to motivation as he swung the sword at Jason’s other side even harder. This time he knocked Jason back a step. While Jason was off balance Nico spun to block a swing from Percy. As he did so he swung his leg out, taking Percy’s legs out from under him. Percy yelped as his back hit the dust, and Nico smirked. Jason swung at him. Nico didn’t have time to block, but he leaned back far enough to not become fileted. His foot made contact with Jason’s chest, sending the older boy stumbling back. 

Nico was panting. He had nearly forgotten how good the rush of battle was, especially when it was against two people he often fantasized about fighting. He was a son of the Big Three just like they were, and he was just as strong. He loathed being compared to the two of them. He was younger, but he doubted their lives had been any more challenging than his had been. With every strike he thought about one of the many terrible events that had happened to him in his life. Swing. The Lotus Casino. Clash. Bianca. Slice. Tartarus. Swing. His health. Collide. Will. 

The world started spinning again. 

The second of dizziness left him vulnerable. In the couple of moments Nico floated in a sea of dissociation, Jason was able to shove him backwards. The ground came up to meet him. Grains of sand scraped at his back. Jason stood above him, the sun making a halo against his silhouette. His sword rested on Nico’s sternum. 

A growl erupted from Nico’s chest. He was frustrated beyond belief, but he wasn’t sure if it was more because he had lost or because his body had betrayed him again. Nico shoved at Jason’s shoulders, meeting little to no resistance. Jason pulled himself to his feet but Nico made no such effort. Percy padded over to the two of them. 

“When did you get so strong?” Percy asked as he examined a scrape on his elbow. Nico was glad he had been the one to put it there. 

“I fought skeletons for my dad on a daily basis. It added up.” The perfect blue sky loomed above Nico. It was oddly comforting. 

“Maybe you’re just slipping Jackson.” Percy’s mouth dropped open and Jason smirked. The two of them started arguing, then sparring again. Grunts and the sounds of swords clanging together echoed around Nico. As long as they weren’t actually going to kill each other, Nico wasn’t going to stop them. Lying down was nice, provided that he ignored the aching in his spine that had been caused by the floor of the Hades cabin. The sun warmed his eternally cold body. He crossed his arms behind his head like a pillow. He was more okay now than he had been in weeks. 

He was even able to forget what it felt like to have his head screaming at him until Will popped into his field of view. Alarm bells went off in his head as if someone had flipped a switch. In the span of a few seconds, Nico went from feeling somewhat okay to being incredibly sick. He could feel the nuts he had eaten a couple of minutes ago swimming around his stomach. Static buzzed in his head. 

“Will.”

The other boy smiled down at him. “Hey, Death Boy.” Nico scowled at the nickname. Will offered his hand to help Nico up, and Nico begrudgingly took it. “Nice to see you out here. You looked pretty impressive with that sword.”

Nico glared but couldn’t stop the blush that snuck into his cheeks. “It’s my job. Sort of.” Will chuckled. The sound made his skin tingle. Will’s eyes were suddenly very interesting to him. He looked at the ground. “I thought you didn’t like fighting.” 

Will shrugged. “I don’t like to fight, but someone has to.” 

“Why are you practicing archery then?” 

He blinked quickly, as if surprised by the notion that Nico had been watching him. Nico immediately regretted his words. Now Will would know exactly how much of a freak he was, watching him work out. He wanted to get back on the ground and let Jason spear him through the chest. 

“Just because I don’t like fighting doesn’t mean I can’t shoot,” Will said, smiling, his eyes flitting down to the bow in his hands. “I’m not as good at it as Kayla is, but I’m decent. As long as the targets are still. And I’m still. I’m terrible at everything else though, Apollo talents or not. Can’t do any music, any poetry. The first time I visited the forges here I broke a shield one of the Hephaestus campers had been working on for a month. And you’d probably fall over laughing if you saw me with a sword.” Nico shrugged. He could feel Will’s eyes on him, and he hated it. Will was just trying to make conversation, and Nico knew that, but he couldn’t help but feel afraid and skittish and annoyingly fuzzy inside when Will was around. The less he talked, the fewer butterflies flew around doing the Indy 500 in his stomach. He chose to focus on Percy and Jason arguing from somewhere to his left instead of the annoyingly attractive blond talking to him.

Will coughed a little. “Have you ever tried archery?” Nico’s head shot up. He stared at Will’s face to see if he was kidding or not. He was fidgeting with the string of a bow he had slung over his shoulder. 

Nico shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, I’ve done the camp stuff.”

“That doesn’t count. You haven’t been here enough of the time to really participate in that anyway.” Nico chewed at the inside of his cheek. He tried to think back and count how many times he had picked up a bow, and he wasn’t able to get to any number higher than three. “Wanna come try with me?”

Nico scoffed. “You have lost your mind.” He moved to push past Will to get to his stuff, but the other boy grabbed his arm. Will’s hand easily encircled Nico’s wrist. Fireflies buzzed in his skin where Will’s obnoxiously warm hand touched him. 

“Come on, Neeks, nothing bad is gonna happen.” Nico scrunched his eyebrows together at the new, and somehow worse, nickname. “There aren’t even people over there to see if you miss the target or accidentally shoot a nearby tree, or a satyr—”

“Will!”

“I’m just saying!”

Nico wrenched his arm out of Will’s grip. The growing panic had become too great. “If I come shoot two arrows with you, will you leave me alone for five minutes?”

Will smirked. “Geez, I don’t know. Five minutes seems like a long time to go without your doctor.” Nico flipped him off.

The two of them walked to the archery range in silence. Anxiety was the worst feeling in the world as far as Nico was concerned, and yet that was all he felt these days. Seeing Will made Nico’s head chase itself in circles. He liked seeing Will more than any other person at camp, but actually being near him set his teeth on edge. Nico knew with each passing day that he was getting sicker and sicker, and he knew that the look of his body reflected that. It wouldn’t take Will long to figure out that something was up, especially if he kept dragging Nico in for doctor’s appointments. Nico wanted to postpone that happening for as long as he could. Even if he ignored the medical side of things, there was still the matter of his massive crush on Will. It had taken Nico years to come to terms with his feelings about Percy, and now he felt like he had been thrown back to square one with Will. Why Nico always had to fall for the straight guys, he didn’t know. He wiped his hands on his jeans, trying to ward away his anxiety.

Upon their arrival, Will shoved a bow into his hands. Nico held it like it was on fire. Will pushed it closer to him. Nico felt heat creeping into his face. 

“These things aren’t very useful when you’re fighting, you know.”

Will rolled his eyes. “You only say that because you’re so used to fighting right next to someone so you can stab them. The whole point of a bow is to stop an enemy before they can get to you.”

The bronze bow glittered in the sunlight. “I don’t know. Sounds like a cop out to me.” Will smiled even though nothing in Nico’s statement had seemed funny to him.

Nico took the arrow Will offered him and notched it. He felt Will’s eyes boring into him like hot iron. He tried not to watch Will’s eyes scan up and down his body, no doubt looking at how thin he was. Taking a deep breath, Nico tried to pull the arrow back like he had seen everyone else do when they did this, but the string proved to have a lot more willpower than he did. The arrow kept leaning off to the side, making it impossible to shoot. When it finally cooperated, he let it fly. The bow fell to his side, the string still buzzing from the shot. The arrow sailed a few feet before embedding itself in the dirt. Nico huffed in annoyance. 

“This is stupid. I’m awful at it.”

Will held out another arrow. “You’re just not used to it. C’mon, try again.” Nico shot daggers at him and crossed his arms. 

“I really don’t need you to give me the whole ‘you can do it’ speech right now, Solace. Just let me go back to the arena. Jason and Percy are probably wondering where I am by now.”

Will’s eyes sparkled, and the corner of his mouth turned up in a slight grin. “You said you’d shoot two arrows with me. You’ve only shot one.”

Nico wanted to slap him. “Have you ever heard of a non-literal statement?” Will shrugged and forced the arrow into Nico’s hand anyway. 

“I’ll help you this time. Notch the arrow.” Nico didn’t move. Will grabbed his hand and held it to the string, pushing Nico’s fingers into the correct position around the arrow. Nico’s heart was racing now, making it even more impossible to focus on what he was doing. He hoped Will couldn’t feel it. Or feel how bony he was.

“Now, you have to pull the string back far enough so that it can give the arrow some power when you release it.” Will laughed a little bit. “You may not weigh much, but I know you have enough muscle on you to pull on a metal string.” He squeezed Nico’s arm. Nico elbowed him in the stomach. His arm tingled wherever Will touched him. 

Nico tried again to pull it back, but apparently his attempt wasn’t good enough for Will. The other boy grabbed his arm, effectively wrapping his body around Nico’s. Will smelled like sandalwood and strawberries. Nico felt himself relax into the pressure of Will’s body even though that was the last thing he should have been doing. He might’ve tried disappearing into the shadows if there had been any close enough. But no. He was alone with Will Solace, doing archery with him, letting Will wrap himself around him. 

Will’s face was right next to his. “Keep the arrow against the bow.” The arrow slid over to its correct position, and Nico’s knees started shaking. “Now look down the range and focus on your target. If you want to pretend it’s Percy or Jason, that’s fine too.” Nico smiled in spite of himself. 

Will adjusted Nico’s fingers around the end of the arrow again. “You ready?” Nico grunted in response. “On my count. Three, two, one…”

The thrum of the string echoed in Nico’s ear. Will took a step back, and Nico bristled at the thought that he missed Will being around him. The bow fell to his side. The arrow wasn’t anywhere near the bullseye, but it had hit the board. It hung off the right side like a leech. Will chuckled behind him. 

“Not bad, Death Boy.” He patted Nico on the shoulder. Nico flinched. “You could use some work on aim, but that comes with practice.”

Nico stared at the ground. “You cheated.”

Will’s eyebrows shot up. “Cheated? How did I cheat? How can you even cheat at archery?”

“You helped,” Nico muttered, thrusting the bow back into Will’s hands. “Next time we’re doing sword fighting. I’d kick your ass in ten seconds.”

Will smiled nervously. “I’ve already told you that I suck, but if that means there will be a second time, then sure.” Nico blushed profusely. He wasn’t used to Will being flirty. On purpose, at least. After a minute of suffocating silence, Will cleared his throat. 

“There’s, uh… there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Will said, taking a step closer to Nico. The mood of the situation shifted. Nico was taken aback; Will never tripped over his words and stuttered. The hairs on the back of Nico’s neck stood up. The alarm bells went off again. Will knew. He had figured it out, how could he not have with the check-ups and him disappearing all the time and Will feeling how frail he was a minute ago? Nico’s heart rate shot up. He started to feel faint again. 

Will’s eyes were bouncing around looking at everything except Nico. He ran a hand through his messy hair, sighing as he did so. “You know, this is a lot harder than I thought it would be.” Nico didn’t say anything. If he opened his mouth, he knew he would start crying. He caught Will’s eyes by accident but once he was looking at them he couldn’t make himself look away.

“It’s just that… It’s just that there’s a campfire this Friday and I was… Well, I was wondering if you’d like to go with me. To it. To the campfire.”

Terror and relief crashed through Nico’s body. His secret was safe, for now, but a new crop of fears had come to the surface. He couldn’t have heard him correctly. Will Solace did not just ask him out. His eyes widened. Thoughts weren’t forming properly in Nico’s head. 

“I… Uhm… I don’t…”

Will clearly sensed his discomfort and started talking again. “I’m sorry. Gods, I’m sorry.” Nico almost felt sorry for Will’s hair given how hard Will was now yanking at it. “I just, I don’t know, Lou Ellen said I should try and I thought maybe you felt the same way I did and…” Will shook his head as if trying to knock some thoughts away. He paled. “You know what, just forget it.”

“Will… I—”

“No, no, no, it’s fine, I swear, I just misinterpreted things.” He turned to put their bows back on the rack. His eyes were redder when he turned back to Nico. “I’ll see you around, alright?” He started to walk away. “Oh, and we have a, uhm, check-up on Saturday, right? I’ll see you for that.”

“Will—”

“Bye!”

Nico felt his chest crumble as Will borderline sprinted to the Big House. He had really screwed himself over now. Anger bubbled in his chest. He really had to mess up everything in his life, didn’t he? Will was never going to want to spend time with him again. Nico didn’t blame him. 

He glanced down at his feet. The grass around him had died.


	5. You Can't Help Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *trigger warning*  
> Nico actually names what he has and goes into a brief description of his actions caused by it

Nico had found it surprisingly hard to hide from Will for extended periods of time. The Hades cabin was the most obvious answer, but that was also the first place Will would look for him. Anywhere in the main camp was out too, as was anywhere by the Sound. He had finally chosen the forest after deciding (or rather banking on the fact) that Will couldn’t possibly know it well given that he always left capture the flag halfway through the game to help Chiron with injured campers. Nico had scouted out a good location to hide last night during the game since it was the one thing at camp he couldn’t get out of unless he had a doctor’s note. From Will. He had settled on the underside of a small pit just past Zeus’ fist. At least if Will wanted to find him, it would take a while. A few hours of searching wouldn’t deter Will nearly as much as it should. Nico suspected that if Will wanted to find him that badly, he would rip the camp apart trying. 

He had been sitting in the dirt with his earbuds in for six hours now. He had managed to sleep for a couple of them, but for the most part he just stared at the trees in front of him. He had never been more grateful for the contraband iPod his dad had given him for his birthday. Nico wanted nighttime to come quicker so he could go back to his cabin and pass out. Unfortunately, it was only three. 

A cool wind blew through the forest, forcing Nico to snuggle deeper into his sweatshirt. It was in times like these that Nico missed his aviator jacket. He couldn’t stand being cold all the time, but his condition all but ensured it. His chest ached a bit as he thought back to the other day: Will essentially holding him in his arms at the archery range, sharing his warmth. Nico grumbled to himself. He had been fighting memories of Will all day. In the past few days, he had seen him once. Nico had watched him for a couple of minutes from across the amphitheater at the campfire, vaguely wondering what it would be like to sit next to him. Would Will try to hold his hand or put his arm around him, or would they just sit and talk? Afterwards, would Will walk him back to his cabin, or would they go their separate ways the minute the fire burned out? Would Will have tried to kiss him? Would Nico have let him? The answer, Nico had decided while watching the way the fire illuminated Will’s features, was probably. At least, it would have been that night. It’s not like it mattered anymore. Nico had somehow managed to say something worse than no and now he would never get the chance to so much as be near Will outside of a doctor’s visit ever again. 

Nico had decided that he was going to skip his check-up that day the minute Will had left him at the archery range. In his mind, nothing good could come out of meeting Will again, so why go at all? It would be awkward, Nico would get angry, and Will would confront him about why his stupid medical tests yielded such bad results. Nico didn’t want to hear it. Not that day, not ever. Staring at nature all day seemed far more appealing. He had made sure Jason and Percy hadn’t seen him go into the woods so they couldn’t snitch on him. He had no other campers in his cabin to tattle on him. For now, he was off the grid, just like he wanted. 

Oddly enough, Nico had spent a good chunk of his time in the woods thinking about Bryce Lawrence. That was probably a result of Nico’s chat a few hours earlier. Reyna had sent him an Iris message the night before just to check in on him. Maybe she had sensed that something was up, because the conversation had quickly become something much deeper. 

“Do you still have those nightmares?” she had asked after a riveting conversation about togas. Her face shimmered in the mist of the message. The mark of Bellona and its accompanying tallies shone on her arm as she stretched it above her head. 

“Sometimes,” he muttered. “I don’t get much sleep though, even without them.” He picked at a loose thread on his jeans. “Do you?”

She nodded. “Frank has caught me yelling in my sleep a few times. Not that he can help much.”

He turned his head to the side a bit. Whenever they talked like this it was easy to forget that she was supposed to be this intimidating Roman praetor and he was supposed to be the terrifying Ghost King. Shadow-travelling across the world with someone had forced both of them to let their walls down around each other. Reyna knew more about his past and his fears than anyone else, even Jason. If there was anyone he could trust outside of Will, it was her. 

“What do you dream about?” he asked. “In the bad ones.”

“Puerto Rico, mostly. My parents. My sister. You?”

Nico laughed grimly. “Where in the laundry list do you want to start?”

Reyna straightened. “Bianca?”

He nodded. “Bianca, Tartarus, the jar.” The thread he had been picking at came loose. “Bryce.”

Reyna’s expression darkened. “Yeah. I dream about him too.” She looked up, expecting Nico to say something else, but he didn’t. “What happened to Bryce wasn’t your fault, Nico.”

Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes. “I’m the one that did it. I’m the one who sent him into the ground and killed him”

“It wouldn’t have ended any differently if you or I had had to fight him with a sword.” She smirked. “Or if the Coach had gotten to him with his baseball bat.”

The idea of Hedge wailing on the Roman with a stick made Nico smile a bit. “I know. Logically, at least.” Nico could still remember how cold it had gotten and how terrified Reyna and Hedge had looked afterwards. 

“I don’t know. I’ve just never felt that… out of control before. And that says a lot for a guy who summons skeletons by accident when he’s upset.” Nico’s hands curled into fists, his nails cutting crescent shaped marks in his palms. “I can’t explain it. It didn’t feel like I was in control, but I knew exactly what I was doing. All of it. I remember…” He couldn’t finish the sentence. He couldn’t say that he remembered Bryce begging, and he remembered himself not getting it, not understanding how saying please could spare someone from justice. 

“No demigod alive can honestly say they’ve never done something they’re ashamed of, and all of us have been afraid of ourselves at one point or another.”

“I would bargain that not many of them are ashamed of sending someone to Hell without even killing them first.” His palms were bleeding now. “Sorry. I’m not trying to dampen your pep talk.”

Reyna shrugged. “You can’t help who your parents are, Nico, just like you can’t help being powerful. We couldn’t have won the war without you.”

Nico knew that was most likely logistically true, but he had never felt that way. Nico was sure he would always see himself as the scary, pesky, depressed teenager with the patience of a grenade, even if no one else saw him that way. Sitting behind a rock and waiting for Will to snatch him up just reminded Nico how much of a danger he was to everyone else. He was fine being a danger to himself, but if he hurt another person in a way that even resembled how he killed Bryce, he knew he would never forgive himself. 

His iPod switched to the next song, which happened to be one of Nico’s favorites. His eyes fluttered shut and he leaned back against the rocks. It would be nice, he thought, to come out here every once in a while when he didn’t need to hide. 

The peace was interrupted by someone yelling loud enough that Nico could hear it through his music. His eyes flew open, and Nico realized with a jump that he had fallen asleep. The sun had dipped much closer to the horizon, creating long shadows through the forest. Nico pulled one earbud out, listening. The call came again, and Nico instantly recognized the voice as none other than Will Solace’s. 

Nico froze, momentarily unsure of what to do. Maybe if he sat here for long enough, Will would get sick of searching for him. Nico highly doubted it, but it was a fun thought to entertain. He pulled the other earbud out and tucked the iPod in his pocket. The sound of feet crunching over leaves grew louder. A chill crept through Nico’s body. This was stupid, he told himself. He had fought hundreds of monsters in his life, and now he was hiding from a 15-year-old boy he actually liked. 

Just thinking about Will’s name made his stomach do a backflip.

Taking a deep breath, he hauled himself to his feet. 

Will was standing on the other side of Zeus’ fist, a deep scowl etched into his face. He crossed his arms when he saw Nico appear from being the pile of rocks.

“I really, really want to yell at you right now, but honestly I’m just glad to see you alive,” Will said in a tight tone. His attire of scrubs and shorts seemed more rustled and unkempt than usual. “What the hell are you doing out here?”

Hearing Will almost curse made Nico wince. “It’s not a big deal, Solace.”

“Maybe not to you, but it is to me and everyone else at camp. When I started asking around to see where you’d gone, no one could tell me anything. It was like you vanished into thin air. Percy and Jason were—”

“I just went for a walk.”

Will narrowed his eyes. “For ten hours?” Nico shrugged. His head was pounding, and a cold sweat was breaking out on the back of his neck. “Look, I’m not stupid. I know you’re avoiding coming to see me in the infirmary.”

“Brilliant observation. May I leave now?” Nico tried to get past Will without waiting for an answer. Before he could get very far, Will had stepped in front of him again. Nico glared.

“Look, if it’s what I said on Wednesday, I told you—”

“Not everything is about you.” Nico’s tone was harsher than he meant it to be. What he had just said was a blatant lie and Nico knew it. His whole life revolved around Will lately and what he was capable of hiding from him.

The tips of Will’s ears turned so red they looked purple. “Fine. If it isn’t about me then what is it about? Why won’t you let me see you? Why are you avoiding me?”

Nico thought for a minute, fighting every instinct he had to run or lash out. A small part of him wanted to tell Will right then and there, but he buried the thought. He liked Will. He didn’t want to lose him, but he was sick of playing this game of cat and mouse.

“How many times do I have to tell you that I’m not a baby?” Nico growled. He took a step closer to Will, bringing their faces mere inches apart. “I can take care of myself. I don’t need the check-ups. I don’t need you breathing down my neck every two minutes.”

A day ago, Will might’ve looked upset. Now the comment only made him look angrier. “Why can’t you get it through your head that I care about you? I thought I made that perfectly clear the other day.”

Nico’s cheeks lit up. He looked down, instantly mad at himself for breaking eye contact with Will. He tried again to go around him, but this time Will shoved him back. Nico’s mouth fell open. Will had never pushed him. Never. Not in the million times they had argued. Not even when Nico pushed first. 

Naturally, Nico pushed back. 

“Listen, I’m trying to help you—”

“You have a weird way of expressing that.”

“Why else would I hunt you down in the woods for hours?”

“And we’re back to the babying thing.”

“Nico!” Will grabbed his shoulders, interrupting their pushing match. His fingers dug into Nico’s skin to the point where it hurt. Nico struggled against Will’s grip to no avail. After a couple seconds he gave up, but refused to take his eyes off Will’s.

“I know something is up with you,” Will said, his voice suddenly soft and soothing. Nico had to work not to stare at the ground. “I can’t stand watching you destroy yourself. I care too much about you to let you do that.”

Nico’s breath hitched. His fingers, which had been wrapped around Will’s forearms, seized and dug in. Dizziness and nausea slammed into him like a truck. His heart beat faster. His breathing grew uneven and ragged. His skin was buzzing again. 

Will’s grip loosened a bit and Nico took the opportunity to push him away, hard. Will almost tripped over a root. The extra couple feet of space gave Nico some breathing room. The cool air shocked his lungs, leaving just enough time for rage to creep back into Nico’s veins.

“You know what? Fine. You win.” The stale taste of stomach acid filled Nico’s mouth. “I’m anorexic. Is that what you wanted to know? You wanted confirmation that I starve myself and throw up until my throat is raw and I let myself get so weak that I have to lay in bed for hours before I can get up?”

Will’s face turned as white as a sheet. “I… I wasn’t going to—”

“Yeah, I know you weren’t going to fucking say it because that’s just how you are.” Nico chuckled humorlessly and crossed his arms to prevent his hands from flying around like they often did when he was angry. “But you already knew that, didn’t you? You knew at my last check-up, and you knew when you were watching me eat breakfast, and you knew the other day at the archery range.”

Will paused, then nodded in a timid manner. “I didn’t know it at the check-up, but yeah… to the other two.”

Nico glared, his eyes burning so much that he thought they would shrivel up. “Great. Good to know. Glad I could be some sort of entertaining puzzle for you for a bit there. Like a game, maybe.” He succeeded in pushing past a very stunned Will this time, but only got a few steps before a hand clamped down on his wrist. 

“Nico.” Will begged, his voice breaking a bit. “Please let me help you.”

He shook his head wildly. “No. No, I don’t need help, you can’t help me. You can’t fix this, and I know that seems impossible to your camp doctor brain or whatever, but it’s true. I have to do this by myself just like I do everything else. You’re just going to judge me, and think I’m stupid and crazy and—”

“Why would I ever think that? What have I done to make you think I’d call you crazy? You don’t have to go through this by yourself. Millions of people struggle with things like this Nico.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Nico grumbled. He was shaking.

Will’s eyes were pleading. “I don’t think about you any differently because of this. You didn’t choose it. You aren’t any less of a person because of it, you don’t matter any less, don’t deserve any less—”

“I have never deserved anything,” Nico hissed. “Never. There’s a reason no one talks to me or hangs out with me or even looks at me. No one ever wanted to be around the son of Hades or the creep from the thirties, and now no one wants to be around the guy who can’t fucking eat. Who can blame them? I can’t. So no, Will, I don’t deserve anything because I just waste everyone’s time because I. Am. Useless.”

Will had tears streaming down his face. Nico didn’t understand why Will was so invested in this argument. Nico knew he wasn’t worth it. His eyes flew down to the ground in habit, but he could barely make out his own feet because of the tears collecting in his eyes.

“Please.” Will’s voice was barely above a whisper. “Nico, please.”

He couldn’t take this anymore. Nico’s hand flew to his blade. The Stygian iron glinted in the sunset. In less than a second the tip was an inch from Will’s throat. Will let go of Nico’s wrist without hesitation and held his hands up in surrender. The air around them was getting colder and Nico could see the grass dying as far away as Will’s feet. 

“Get the fuck away from me, Will.” The other boy’s mouth dropped open, but no sound came out. Without another word, Nico turned and marched in the other direction, not bothering to sheathe his sword. 

The grass kept shriveling up around him even as he walked away. Will made one sound that could have been pleading or crying, but it wasn’t a word, and as far as Nico could tell he wasn’t trying to follow him. Nico wanted to scream. He wanted to slice up the trees around him and curl up on the ground and sob, but he couldn’t. He wanted to run back to Will and throw his arms around him and apologize with every cell in his body, but he couldn’t do that either.

He held the tears in all the way to the Hades cabin. Then he fell onto his bed and wailed.


	6. I Can Fix It

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *trigger warning*  
> Depictions of death

As much as Will wanted to curl up in the corner of the Apollo cabin and never leave again, he couldn't afford to waste any time on tears. He had been able to spend exactly three minutes in his cabin after returning from his confrontation with Nico before he had been summoned to the Big House to help heal some Hermes campers that had been sparring a little too roughly. He had been given the luxury of having a breakdown/borderline panic attack in the woods after Nico had threatened to spear him, but besides that, he hadn’t given himself any time to feel emotion. Or eat. Or sleep. Or breathe. 

Someone (Will couldn’t remember who) had finally forced Will to sit down, but he had only ceded after every patient had been discharged and the supply closet had been reorganized. They had given him an apple to eat too, but eating was the last thing he wanted to do. Eating just made him think about Nico. He had succeeded, for the most part, in not thinking about the other boy for three days. Even on his ‘break’, he was cutting bandages, keeping his mind distracted. 

His lackluster self-care was catching up to him. His fingers couldn’t keep a good grip on the bandages. The scissors kept slipping to the side, threatening to slice his fingers or tear the bandages. His head was foggy, his back ached, his mouth was filled with cotton. Gods, if this was how Nico felt all the time…

Will shoved the thought out of his head, throwing the scissors to the floor as if they had burned him and kicked them away in disgust. He ran a hand through his hair as he grumbled to himself. There wasn’t going to be much left of him tomorrow if he kept going at this rate. It scared him a little bit that he was sure if he cared. The idea of sleep terrified him. His dreams about the war were already bad enough. 

Sighing, Will bent over and picked up the scissors again. 

He had only cut four or five bandages when he heard a set of footsteps stop in the doorway. Looking up, Will saw that Nico had entered the room. He looked so much worse than he had a few days ago. Nico wasn’t wearing the sweatshirt Will was used to seeing him in, so the medic had a full view of Nico’s stick thin arms and hands. The shirt he wore hung on him like a curtain, revealing the sharp edges of Nico’s collarbones. His eyes seemed to pop out of the deep circles they sat in. For once, the sight of Nico scared Will. 

“Hey.” Nico’s voice was gravelly. Will just looked at him, completely incapable of speech. “I just wanted to come and let you know that I won’t be around much longer.” He spoke with such certainty that Will almost didn’t ask for an explanation. 

“Are you going out to Camp Jupiter?” Nico shook his head. “School?” Another no. Ice creeped into Will’s chest. 

“My dad spoke to me this morning,” Nico said. As he talked, his eyes never left Will’s, which made Will squirm. All of Nico’s usual nervous habits had vanished. “He said I’d be meeting him down there soon.” 

Will’s head started to spin as if he had been thrown onto a merry-go-round. “But… But you’ll come back, right? I mean, you’ve said before that your errands for your dad don’t usually take that long.”

Nico shook his head. “I’m not talking about a job.” His face contorted into a sick smile that made Will go numb. “I’m talking about death.”

The world had been sucked out from underneath Will’s feet. He lunged forward to grab at Nico’s arm, but he was just out of reach. He fell to the floor. Nico stared at him, still smiling.

“It doesn’t have to come to this,” Will said, his head swimming. “I can help you, Nico, if you’ll just sit—”

“You can’t save anyone, Solace. Especially not me.” Nico reached down, offering to help Will off the floor. Will was having a hard time seeing due to all the tears in his eyes. “Get up. We might as well make these last moments worth something.” In a daze, Will took hold of Nico’s arm and let himself be pulled up. Nico dragged Will closer, and before Will could figure out what to say or do, Nico’s lips were on his. 

Will didn’t know what to do. An argument erupted in his head as if someone had pulled a cork out of a bottle of champagne. He should push Nico away. He should push him away and force him into a bed and fix him. And yet, he couldn’t. Nico’s arms around him were too much. The way Nico leaned into him made him weak. Will’s eyes fluttered closed, and he almost gave up. Then he realized that the other boy’s skin was even more freezing than usual. 

He pulled back, breathing heavily. “Nico—”

Nico’s smile deepened. He took Will’s hand and moved it to the center of his chest. “It’s too late. Feel.” Will froze. His hand began to tremble. 

There was no heartbeat under his palm. 

Before Will could say anything, Nico collapsed. Will tried to grab at his arms to keep him up, but Nico’s arms turned to mist the minute Will touched them. Nico hit the floor with a thud. Will threw himself down next to him. Nico’s pulse was still absent. His vacant eyes stared up at the ceiling. A scream tore itself from Will’s throat. Nico’s features looked normal again. He wasn’t a skeleton anymore. He wasn’t a monster. Nico was just Nico again. Will’s Nico. He collapsed into Nico’s chest, and sobbed. 

Will woke with a start, thrashing around in his chair as though he had been trying to rip through some restraints. He hadn’t thought it was possible to have a panic attack in a dream and wake up still having one, but the tightness in his chest couldn’t be anything else. His eyes jumped to the spot on the floor where he and Nico had been lying a moment ago. Nothing. He let out a breath he hadn’t realized that he had been holding. Cold sweat coated to his face and body, gluing his clothes to him. The buzzing under his skin wouldn’t go away. His eyes begged to close again, but Will was terrified that if he let them he would see Nico’s dead body again. 

It took Will far too long to realize that his hand was burning. He glanced down, noticing for the first time that the pair of scissors was still in his hand. A three-inch gash had been dug into his palm. He cursed and threw the scissors to the ground. Blood gushed freely as he moved his hand. Will winced. He shuffled over to a medical cart and rifled through it. There was only one suture kit left. He sat down in a nearby chair, using the cart as a table. Swabbing his hand with alcohol pads had been easy enough, but Will couldn’t even make his shaky, clumsy hands hold the needle right. Trying with the clamps didn’t go any better. With a shout, Will shoved over the cart, sending needles, bandages, and a few pieces of ambrosia flying across the room. He kicked at the cart again and again and again, only stopping when his foot was screaming in agony. The tears came soon after, pouring down his face as though someone had turned on a faucet. He squeezed his eyes shut against his best wishes. Nico’s body flashed before him, but he pressed his palms to his eyes until he was seeing black and purple and blue. His knees had hit the ground before he had been able to register the sensation of falling. The coolness of the floor was welcoming to his burning forehead. 

“Will!” He didn’t have enough sense left in him to turn around and see who called his name. A hand appeared on his shoulder. Lou Ellen crouched in front of him. Will looked up from the floor and felt something in his chest cave when he saw how worried her eyes were. 

“I’m fine,” Will grumbled, wiping his eyes with the hem of his shirt. 

She blinked at him. “Do you honestly expect me to believe that? It looks like a pegasus came storming through here.” Her eyes skirted over him, landing on his hand. “Gods, Will. What’ve you been doing?”

Shame coursed through Will’s body. “I fell asleep with a pair of scissors in my hand. It’s really not that bad.” Blood dripped from his palm to the floor, forming a neat little puddle by his feet. The sight didn’t make his statement any more believable. “I can fix it.” He reached down and grabbed the suture stuff again. His hands were still shaking, but a little less violently than before. It didn’t really matter though because Lou Ellen snatched the forceps out of his hand. 

“William Solace, will you stop working for five minutes?” She threw the tools behind Will. The impact echoed off the glass windows. “I’m going to get Austin, you’re going to sit here and let him fix you, and then you’re going to tell me what’s going on. Deal?” He glared. Will didn’t really want to do any of that, but he also didn’t want Lou Ellen turning him into a turtle or some other slow thing that couldn’t run away. He sat silently as she marched out of the room. The panicked feeling had left him for the most part, and now he just felt completely and utterly drained. He yawned right as Austin came into the room, a fresh suture kit in his hand. Austin glanced at the mess on the floor but didn’t say anything. Will would have to thank him later. 

Five minutes later, Will sat on a nearby bed with a somewhat peeved Lou Ellen across from him and a fresh bandage on his hand. Lou Ellen hadn’t let Austin give Will any ambrosia, saying it was reserved for people who had serious camp-related injuries and not for stupid medics who accidentaly cut themselves with scissors because they refused to ask for help or talk about their feelings. Will supposed he deserved that, but now his hand was aching and he would be completely useless if any actually injured person came in that Will needed to heal. Not that Lou Ellen would have let him anyway. 

“You haven’t left this house in days,” Lou Ellen said once Austin had left for good. “Chiron called me to come in here and check on you. Chiron.” Will’s stomach sank at the mention of their mentor. “You have to tell me what’s going on. I’m your best friend. I’m not going to judge you or laugh at you or anything. I just want to help.”

Her words reminded Will too much of his own from the other day. His fingers curled into the papery sheets of the bed as Will fought back more tears. All the anger and sadness and worry he had been bottling up for the past few days threatened to overwhelm him. 

“It’s Nico,” he admitted finally. Lou Ellen waited for more. “He skipped his check-up with me Saturday and disappeared. I thought he was just avoiding me because of what happened when I asked him to the campfire, but…” He trailed off, picking at a loose thread on his jeans. 

“Gods, I was so stupid. I was so, so stupid.”

“You’re talking to yourself again. The point of me being here is for us to have a conversation, not for you to fall into a spiral of your own obsessive and destructive thoughts.”

Will smiled a bit. If Nico could see him right now, Will knew he would barrage him with critiques about him being hypocritical. Will always picked on Nico for being self-deprecating, and now he was doing it to himself. He took a shaky breath. 

“Something is really wrong with Nico. Like, ‘he could die’ wrong, but he won’t let me help him.”

“Have you talked to him?”

Will winced. “I tried. He screamed at me and threatened to stab me with a sword.” Lou Ellen’s eyes widened. “Yeah. It was quite terrifying, actually.”

“I bet.”

He looked down at his hands. “I just… I don’t know what to do. He’s a ticking time bomb and he won’t even look at me, much less let me help him.”

A smirk creeped onto Lou Ellen’s face. “Sounds like a tough nut to crack. Reminds you of someone, doesn’t it?”

Will scowled, but he knew she was right. The parts of Nico that annoyed Will the most were the ones Will could find in himself. They were both hard on themselves, they both worked way too hard, and they were both obnoxiously stubborn. Will supposed that if he could ever meet himself he would want to chuck a roll of bandages at his own head. 

Lou Ellen grabbed Will’s hands, carefully avoiding Will’s cut, and pulled them into her lap. 

“Nico isn’t stupid, he just needs a little space and time. There are half a dozen people at this camp watching out for him. His safety isn’t dependent on you. Plus, he still likes you. He’ll come to you when he’s ready.”

“I don’t know,” Will said doubtfully. “You didn’t see him Saturday. The look in his eyes—”

“You’re overanalyzing again.” Will shut his mouth. “You’d have to do a lot more than care about him and confront him about a problem to make him run away for good. He may be mad and upset and terrified of the situation, and you may be the target of those frustrations for now, but he’ll come around.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“Then you can have another breakdown and we can regroup.”

Will smiled in spite of himself. Lou Ellen was right. Again. A bit of relief slipped into his head. It was so nice to have someone he could talk to. Demigods couldn’t afford to bottle everything up; it would destroy them. Will dimly thought of Nico, wondering if he had talked to anyone or not. 

“Let’s go eat,” Lou Ellen suggested. “All people have been talking about today is some exotic meal they’re supposed to be serving tonight. I, for one, would like to try it. You, for second, need to leave this freaking house.” For once, Will didn’t think about arguing. His stomach was growling like a demon. Lou Ellen bounced off the bed, beckoning for Will to follow.

“Lou Ellen?” She turned back expectantly. “Thanks. For everything.” He held up his bandaged hand as if to remind her that it should be included in his thanks. 

She grinned. “No problem. I wasn’t going to let you waste away in here. That’d make me a really awful best friend.” 

Will slid off the bed and walked after her. He had only gotten to the doorway when she jostled his shoulder. 

“Race you to the mess hall.”

Will watched her go, chuckling. He was way too tired to run.


	7. I Need to Tell Someone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *trigger warning*  
> Descriptions of vomiting, passing out

Nico couldn’t believe what he was about to do. If someone had told him a month ago that he would be pacing around in front of Zeus’ cabin even considering the idea of talking to Jason about the things going on in his head, he would’ve summoned a skeleton to chase them around. Why did Cupid have to pick Jason of all people for Nico to bear his soul to? The only person he would have preferred less was Percy. Nico had been trying to forget about that since the day it had happened, but no dice. Since he couldn’t take back what he said—or rather what the god had made him say—he had tried his best not to confide in Jason anymore. Nico hated the fact that he had to have feelings. They just made everything difficult. Unfortunately, and much to Nico’s displeasure, he had decided that he couldn’t ignore them anymore. His body was rebelling against him more than it ever had before, and it was beginning to terrify him. 

It had really come to a head a day ago when Nico had passed out in the bathroom. He wasn’t any stranger to passing out, of course, but this time had felt different. When he passed out after shadow traveling, it had always felt like the shadows were invading his brain, and it was always relatively quick. In the few times he had passed out because of not eating, he had always worked himself too much beforehand. None of that had been true this time. Nico had just sat up after retching violently into the toilet. Someone had coerced him into eating a cupcake during some camper’s birthday celebration, and now he was deeply regretting it. Spit mixed with bile and blood dripped down his chin. His throat was killing him and his head was entering a race to catch up with it. The familiar faint feeling crawled into his head, but he didn’t think much of it. He couldn’t remember the last time his body had felt legitimately good, so a little bit of fuzziness couldn’t hurt him. Not that he really cared. Feeling good had been an unattainable goal for years. It wasn’t like his head had plans to change his lifestyle anytime soon.

Then the feeling got thicker, enveloping his brain as though a cloud had settled in the bathroom. Colors swirled in front of his eyes. I’m going to pass out, Nico thought. He realized too late that he didn’t want to. His fingers gripped the edges of the toilet bowl so hard his fingers turned the color of paper. His breath hitched in his throat. The static and confusion grew until he couldn’t push it away anymore. He felt himself tip slightly and then he was out.

He woke up in what he could only assume was a minute or so later. He was confused, disoriented, and extremely exhausted. His head ached in a very specific spot. Reaching up, his fingers grazed over a tender spot. When he pulled his hand away there was a tiny bit of blood clinging to his skin. Nico cursed. He didn’t move for a few minutes. The concrete underneath him smelled vaguely of stale urine and mildew. The gods must have had mercy on him because no one else came into the bathroom.

Ever so slowly, Nico sat up. His head screamed. For a minute he was sure he had a concussion. Will popped into his head, but he decided not to think too hard about him. He could imagine Will chiding him and fussing over him. The thought made him smile, then grimace. He stroked the spot on his head again. After a minute, he decided that he probably slammed his head on the toilet bowl when he fell. 

Nico had sat on the floor for half an hour trying to work up enough strength to walk back to his cabin. 

The next day Nico went to breakfast voluntarily. After nearly an hour of staring at his plate of pancakes he had managed to take two bites. He let a pesky kid from the Hebe cabin have the rest. He had tried so hard to keep it down afterwards, but he hadn’t succeeded. He couldn’t eat. He couldn’t talk to Will. Generally, his life was not going great.

And that’s how he ended up pacing in front of Jason’s cabin, cursing every god that had ever lived. Or rather, existed. 

It seemed stupid for a child of Hades to be afraid of death, and yet Nico was. The idea of death had never bothered him before. In all the battles he’d been in, he had never really cared if he lived or died. Mostly he had just tried to push through to keep everyone around him safe. Even when he had been trapped in that stupid jar he just wanted to get out and help everyone. His nightmares had reflected the recent change. He couldn’t begin to count the number of dreams where he had woken up in a panic because the last thing he had seen were claws or knives gouging out his throat. 

Nico kicked at a rock near his foot. It sailed into the side of Jason’s cabin, chipping away at a bit of paint. Nico had never felt more stupid and more terrified in his life. After another minute of grumbling to himself, Nico stepped up to the door and knocked.

A dull ‘come in’ echoed from inside the cabin. Nico’s anxiety spiked, but he swallowed it down and forced the door open. Jason and Piper were curled up on a couch that Nico vaguely remembered helping him and Percy move in while avoiding the harpies. The TV (another thing Jason had smuggled in) was blaring. The two of them were mercilessly smashing buttons on the xbox controllers clutched in their hands. Nico stood awkwardly in the doorway.

Jason threw the controller to the floor with a shout, sending Piper into a fit of giggles. 

“There’s no way that was fair,” he muttered as he hit Piper with a decorative pillow. “I don’t know how, but you definitely cheated.”

Piper laughed. “You can’t stand losing to a girl?”

“Oh, I can stand losing to you in a lot of ways,” Jason said. “Video games are not one of the things I’m willing to bow to you for.” He tossed the pillow onto an empty bunk, still scowling.

Piper looked past her boyfriend and made eye contact with Nico.

“Oh, hey.” Her voice didn’t sound disappointed like Nico had expected her to be. Jason craned his neck to see what Piper was looking at. His face lit up when he saw Nico. The reaction made Nico squirm. People shouldn’t be happy to see him. 

“What’s up?”

Nico shuffled a little farther into the cabin, not bothering to close the door behind him. Jason and Piper stared at him, waiting for words that never came. Nico twisted his skull ring around his finger. He was certain there’d be a blister later. 

“I, uhm… I need to talk to Jason,” he stammered. A layer of concern fell over Jason’s features the minute the words left his mouth. Jason muttered something to Piper and kissed her on the cheek. She got up without hesitation, patting Nico on the shoulder as she walked out. The sound of the door shutting made Nico’s throat close. No going back now. What was he even doing here? He couldn’t believe he had thought he could tell Jason anything, and there was no way Jason wouldn’t look at him like an alien or a monster or—

“Do you want to talk in here or go for a walk or what?” Jason asked, interrupting Nico’s thoughts. The air would probably have made Nico feel less trapped, but he didn’t trust his legs to carry him around anywhere else.

“Here’s fine.” Jason nodded, scooting over to give Nico more space to sit down. Nico really didn’t want to get any closer to Jason, but he knew that if he didn’t sit he wasn’t going to admit anything. The couch felt like it would swallow him, and Nico almost wished it would. Jason stared. Nico’s skin burned. 

“So, uh… I…” His throat felt like it was swelling up. If there had been anything in his stomach, he was 98% certain he would have thrown it up.

“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to,” Jason said. Nico appreciated him filling the silence. He supposed Jason’s words were supposed to be comforting, but he didn’t feel it. 

Nico stared down at the floor. “I do though. I—I need to tell someone because I can’t keep letting myself—”

“Uh, Nico?” He looked up at Jason whose eyes were locked on a spot to Nico’s left. The skeleton of some small animal was trying to burrow its way out of the floor. Nico cursed his father for giving him the ability to summon skeletons when he was upset.

The creature sank back into the floor. 

“Sorry,” Nico mumbled. He twisted the skull ring with so much force that it flew off his finger and nearly hit Jason in the face. Guilt flooded Nico’s chest. 

“Don’t worry about it.” Jason got up to go get the ring, and when he handed it back, Nico was crying. Jason didn’t push or say anything; he simply waited for Nico to calm down. Nico took a few deep breaths through his nose. The panic clung to his cells like molasses. 

“I have problems eating,” he finally spat out, the words burning his mouth like acid.

Jason furrowed his eyebrows. “Like… your stomach is upset?”

Nico shook his head. His leg had started bouncing. Nico wished Jason was more intuitive. 

“No… I mean, like…” Will’s face from their fight in the forest flashed through his mind. “Like I don’t eat. I haven’t been eating for a while. And I can’t make myself eat.”

It seemed as though the wire that had been holding everything so stiff in the room had snapped. Just saying the words had removed a huge weight from Nico’s chest. Air flooded his lungs. He hadn’t expected telling someone to feel so relieving. The nerves were still there, of course, but at least now Nico didn’t feel like rocks were being pushed down his throat.

Jason’s face paled slightly. Nico hated when Jason looked uncomfortable. He always seemed too confident and perfect to look out of place and uneasy. 

“Can you try and explain it a little more? Please?”

And so Nico tried. He tried to explain everything that had been going on in his head for the past month, which turned out to be a pretty tall order. He tried to trace his metaphorical steps back from the war. He told Jason about his interactions with Will and all his doctor’s appointments up until their fight in the woods, electing to omit all the details about his crush and Will asking him out. He told him about yesterday in the bathroom too. By the time he was done, he was sobbing. Jason, to his credit, didn’t say anything until Nico had finished.

Before Nico could process anything, Jason had pulled him into a hug. On a different day, Nico would’ve shoved him away, but right now he wanted a hug so badly that he would’ve accepted one from anyone. He tried to babble something about messing up Jason’s shirt with his tears, but Jason shushed him. 

“Nico?”

Nico sniffled in response. 

He felt Jason take a deep breath. “I think we need to go see Annabeth.”

Nico had begged Jason not to talk to Annabeth the entire way to Cabin 6. Jason had shut him down every time, saying that Nico lost his ability to bargain. Nico knew that what Jason was saying was fair and that he was just trying to do what he thought was best for him, but he couldn’t help but be annoyed. Annoyed wasn’t even the right word. He was just plain terrified. Again. Telling Jason had been hard enough. Now another person had to know. Jason had at least promised that Nico wouldn’t have to say anything to Annabeth if he didn’t want to unless he was asked a direct question, that Jason would do all the talking, but that didn’t offer as much consolation as Nico would’ve hoped. He had had enough of people talking about him behind his back for at least seven lifetimes. It didn’t matter to Nico that Annabeth and Jason would be within earshot.

Malcolm, who had been sitting on the porch when they arrived, went in to get Annabeth. While he was gone, Jason turned to Nico. 

“Annabeth will know what to do about all this,” Jason promised, sounding a lot more sure than he looked. Nico guessed that was a skill he had had numerous opportunities to hone as a praetor. Regardless, Nico didn’t acknowledge Jason’s words. Annabeth appeared a minute later, her hair disheveled like she had either been kissing Percy or staying up too late studying architecture. 

Jason led her a few feet away and started explaining everything to her in a rapid, hushed voice. Nico tried his best to ignore what he was saying. Annabeth’s gray eyes seemed to grow darker as he talked. They were the same stormy eyes Nico had seen the first day they had met, way back at Westover. Halfway through the story she made eye contact with him, making him squirm.

“You need to go talk to Will,” Annabeth said after Jason had finished. “Jason and I and everyone else can support you and all, but Will is the only one who can help you medically.”

Nico shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I doubt he will even treat me,” he said. “He was really, really angry on Saturday.”

Annabeth crossed her arms in Nico’s direction, but somehow it didn’t feel like an angry gesture. “This isn’t exactly up for debate.”

“I get that.” Nico rubbed at his face. As irritated and scared as he was, he knew he had gone to Jason’s because some small part of him wanted help. “It’s just… complicated.”

Annabeth’s lips perked up into a smile for a second before settling back into their serious position. 

“That doesn’t mean you get to not do it.” Jason’s voice was slowly escalating, which made Nico feel even worse. Knowing he was the one who made the consistently collected Jason upset made him shake. 

“I know that!” Nico paused, taking a deep breath before any more skeletal animals came crawling out of the ground. “I will talk to him, I swear on the River Styx, just… please let me do it on my own terms.”

Annabeth ran a hand through her hair, tangling her fingers in the remnants of her bun. Her eyes had gotten even darker. “You have 24 hours to do it yourself. Otherwise, I will personally drag you to the Big House.”


	8. In Good Faith

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *trigger warning*  
> Descriptions of passing out

When Will saw Nico crossing through camp on his way to the Big House, he thought it was a trick of the Mist. He looked around for Lou Ellen, half expecting her to be snooping around and playing a practical joke on him, but even after a thorough inspection of the Big House, he couldn’t find her. The realization that it was actually Nico was far more terrifying. His chest tightened as he remembered his dream. From his vantage point in an upstairs window, Nico didn’t look near-death, but he didn’t look great either.

Kayla yelled up the stairs to Will that Nico was waiting for him on the porch. His stomach did a backflip. 

Nico was standing at the bottom of the steps in his usual sweatshirt and jeans. His hands were stuffed in his sweatshirt pocket, but Will could tell by the slight ripples in the fabric that Nico was twisting his skull ring around like he always did when he was nervous. He looked up at Will when the doors opened, but he didn’t say anything. His eyes were red and puffy as though he’d been crying. Will supposed his looked about the same.

“Hi,” Nico muttered finally, his eyes dropping to the ground. 

Will narrowed his eyes. “Hi? I haven’t seen you in almost a week after you threaten me with a sword and all you say is hi?”

“What am I supposed to say?” he grumbled. “It was an accident?”

“A sincere ‘I’m sorry’ would be a good start.” Nico still wouldn’t look up. A part of Will felt bad for him, but mostly he just felt angry. Despite Lou Ellen’s speech, Will had really been starting to think that Nico would never come back. He hadn’t entirely been sure that Nico was still at camp. He was glad Nico was alive and not passed out in a ditch, but he thought he deserved a little more than a ‘hi’.

“Can we sit?” Nico asked. 

Will didn’t really want to, but he sat next to Nico on the steps. He hated being at a loss for words and yet he felt like that nearly every time he saw Nico. He could feel the waves of discomfort radiating off the other boy. Will ran a hand through his hair. He wasn’t going to speak until Nico did. 

“I know I wasn’t the nicest last week,” Nico started, somehow enveloping himself even more into his sweatshirt. “And I know it was kind of a dick move to skip an appointment like that—”

“Kind of?” Will felt the rage boiling in his stomach again.

“Okay, it was definitely a dick move and I shouldn’t have done it,” he amended. “Happy?”

Will wasn’t, but he felt Nico getting agitated so he didn’t say anything.

“And I shouldn’t have hidden in the forest and not told anyone where I was going.”

Will bristled. “You know who we are, right? And where we live? A demigod disappearing isn’t something anyone here takes lightly. You remember what happened when Percy—”

“People tend to take it a little lighter when it’s me missing and not a war hero,” Nico snapped. “I disappear all the time, and no one has ever cared before.”

“I care!” Nico blushed. “I care and Percy cares and Annabeth cares—”

“The point is that me disappearing for a couple of hours isn’t anything new.” Will bit his tongue because he wanted to say a lot more but knew that he would yell if he said anything. 

“I know how to handle myself in a fight if I had gotten involved in one, which I didn’t.” Nico sighed. “And I shouldn’t have yelled at you or pushed you or threatened you with a sword.”

Nico fell silent, and Will couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t make Nico yell at him. All week he had been thinking of things to say for if he ever saw Nico again, but now that he was here nothing seemed to fit. A cool wind blew through the camp, making Nico shiver next to him. Will almost offered him his jacket but decided that would also not be the right move. Will felt stuck. He hadn’t expected to feel so angry when he saw Nico again. His new anger mixed with Nico’s consistently unstable temper meant that Will was certain this conversation wouldn’t get them anywhere. 

“I can’t really, you know, take back what I said but…” Nico shook his head lightly. “I should've at least come by. After, you know. I know you did what you did and said what you said because you care.” He made a weird face at the last word as though it tasted wrong and felt weird in his mouth. 

“Or whatever.”

Will smiled a bit. At least some part of their conversation had stuck with Nico. “Yeah. Or whatever.”

Nico’s lips curled up a little as if he were laughing at himself. “So I guess the only thing left for me to say is…” He trailed off. After a minute of trying to spit out a few words he flung himself back onto the steps. 

“Gods, why am I so bad at this?” he moaned, rubbing his face with his hands. When he removed them, he was smirking a little. The change in expression made Will feel giddier than it should have. “Have you heard me speak Italian?”

Will’s anger receded a bit. “Italian?

Nico nodded. “It’s the language I grew up with. Born in Italy and all. I don’t remember much of the country, but I still can get through the language. I feel like this whole thing would be easier if I just spoke that.”

“Why?” 

He shrugged. “I don’t really know. I speak both English and Italian pretty well, but Italian seems more… genuine.”

Will leaned back so he was level with Nico. “Say it in Italian then.” Nico turned to him and narrowed his eyes. Will shrugged. “Why not?”

The other boy scrunched his eyebrows together. Will hated that it made him look cuter. “You won’t understand it.” Will shrugged again. Maybe if he couldn’t understand it he’d get less mad.

Nico eyed him warily, but after a minute or so of no response, he sighed. “Fine. Uh.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Voglio dice che mi… mi dispiace.”

Will’s smile became real. He didn’t speak Italian, but he had heard Austin sing enough in the language to know what the last bit meant. Even though Nico was a pretty polite guy, Will had doubted that he would ever apologize to him about this. He was elated to hear the words come out of Nico’s mouth even if it was in a language Will didn’t speak.

“Thanks,” Will said softly, glancing down at his hands. “I appreciate that. A lot, actually.” Nico sat up. His face was as red as a fire truck. Will almost wanted to giggle. 

“If you ever ask me to speak in Italian again, I’ll hit you.”

“Duly noted.” Nico pulled his hood up over his head. He still seemed uncomfortable. Will couldn’t blame him. He would be lying if he said he felt completely at ease. Thoughts were still swirling around in his head, stuffing up his thoughts. A thin layer of anger was still draped over his brain. 

“I feel like you didn’t come here just to say that,” Will said. He felt like he was walking on broken glass. Nico stiffened a bit. 

“You… would be correct.” Nico turned noticeably paler. “I, uh, I told Jason. And then he told Annabeth.” He was twisting the skull ring again. “Basically, they said that I had 24 hours to come talk to you or they’d drag me to you.”

Something in Will shifted. The little hint of anger that had almost disappeared flared. In the span of a few seconds he had gone from almost happy to indignant and bitter. The part of his brain that knew it wasn’t fair to Nico got swallowed up by the rest of his emotions. 

“So you didn’t come here in good faith.”

Nico blinked in confusion. Realization filled his features when he saw Will’s expression. “No. No, that’s not what I meant.”

Will didn’t want to hear it. “Look, I get that you don’t really like talking to me and all, but the fact that Annabeth had to threaten you to get you here…” Will stood up before Nico could open his mouth. Nico copied his motions, but Will was nearly up the steps by the time he had turned around. He managed to grab the sleeve of Will’s jacket before he could get out of his reach. 

“Will—”

“No! I don’t want to hear your defense. Why don’t you just have Jason help since—”

“Will.” Nico’s voice was softer and meeker. The tone change was enough to make Will turn. Nico’s face was so pale it was almost translucent. He mumbled something unintelligible. Before Will could ask him to repeat himself, Nico was clawing at Will’s chest, presumably trying to get a grip on his shirt to keep himself from falling. It didn’t work. Will’s stomach dropped into his toes as he watched Nico’s eyes roll back into his head. His knees buckled and he collapsed, only avoiding slamming his head into the banister because Will threw his hand in front of his forehead. He couldn’t grab Nico in time though. His full weight fell into the steps, and Will heard a sickening crack as one of Nico’s bones snapped. Nico slipped down a couple of the steps, his body bumping up and down without any control.

“Nico!”

Nico didn’t get up. And he didn’t get up. And he didn’t get up. 

With shaking hands, Will reached down to feel for a pulse. There was one, much to his relief, but it was faint and slow. Then it sputtered.

Before Will could stop himself, he screamed.


	9. I Shoot Arrows

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who thought I would be mean enough to end the whole story on a cliffhanger, here you go (there are still three chapters after this one).
> 
> *Trigger warning*  
> Mentions of ill effects of eating disorders, vomiting, distorted body image, past self harm

Nico was on a bridge. Bluish-green water flowed beneath him, forming a river that wound itself through the buildings. The buildings themselves looked like they were straight out of a movie. Oranges and golds and yellows and browns coated the scene. Shadows arced over the city as the sun began to dip past the horizon.

He was in Venice again. There was no doubt in his mind. 

The last time he had been on this bridge was the day before he and Bianca and his mom had left for America. The world had been accelerating towards mutual destruction, and fast. An atmosphere of panic and dread had descended over Italy years before that. Even as a kid, Nico could feel that the country didn’t feel how it once had. Being able to stand in Venice again and feel that everything was calm was a gift. He closed his eyes, savoring the smell of the water and the sounds of waves lapping at the edges of the waterway. 

“Nico?” He turned. Bianca was standing at the other end of the bridge, her face not quite smiling but not quite frowning either. She was wearing the same silvery coat she had been wearing the last time Nico had seen her along with her green beanie. Somehow, he didn’t feel scared. 

“What’re you doing here?” she asked, making no move to come any closer.

“I…” He glanced up at the buildings and frowned a bit. He had planned on saying something about visiting his birth place, but hadn’t he just been at camp? He couldn’t really remember.

“I’m not sure.”

Bianca crossed her arms over her chest. “You shouldn’t be here, fratellino.”

Nico furrowed his eyebrows. “Why? What’s wrong with it?”

“I’m dead,” she said, as if Nico needed a reminder. Her voice lacked any sympathy or inflection. “You shouldn’t be anywhere near where I am. Not yet, anyway.”

As he stared at her, Nico realized that he was older than her now. Everything about that seemed wrong. Even though he was now taller and stronger and more mature, he still should’ve been Bianca’s little brother. Looking down on her was weird, even if it was only a couple of inches. Knowing that his face looked older than hers was an uncomfortable thought. 

“I’m the son of Hades, aren’t I? Being with dead people is kind of my thing.” He smirked, somewhat proud of his comeback, but Bianca didn’t smile.

“Let’s take a walk,” she said. “Maybe then I can understand why you came. And why you refuse to leave.”

Nico had never realized that he missed Venice. If you ignored the fact that he and Bianca had spent 70 years in the Lotus Casino, it had only been sevenish years since he had been here outside of the summer’s quest (he didn’t exactly count that time). America and New York were nice and all, but this had always been Nico’s real home. His home before the gods had entered his life and sent him spiraling. He wanted to stay and never go back to the life of quests and danger and stress. Maybe he could even drag Will with him, and they could live out the rest of their lives here.

“Is it not weird to you that there aren’t any tourists here?” Bianca asked as they walked deeper into the city. “From what I’ve heard, this place is usually crawling with them.”

Nico nodded. He’d forgotten that Bianca hadn’t been here since the 30s. “I mean, it’s a beautiful city. Why shouldn’t people come here to see it?”

She shrugged, running her hands along the bricks of an adjacent building. “I guess. That still doesn’t mean that you should be here.”

Nico rolled his eyes. “Why are you so stuck up on why I’m here and trying to get me to leave so badly? Can’t we just enjoy it?” He glanced over at her, suppressing a faint smile. “I, uh, missed you.”

“You always miss me.”

“Is that a problem?” A chill crept up his neck, but he ignored it. 

“Not always. You just tend to get a little obsessive about things.” Bianca glanced at him. “You know, dwelling on things too long, overthinking things, shutting people out because of things that happened years before. You’ve always been somewhat obsessive,” Nico flinched, thinking of Mythomagic, “but now you just let things control you. You know. Stuff with me. Stuff with Will.”

Nico stopped walking. “You know about Will?”

She smiled for the first time in their conversation. “How could I not know about Will? It’s all that’s ever on your mind lately. Well…” Her eyes skirted across the canal. “That and one other thing.”

Given that she knew about Will, he shouldn’t have been surprised that she knew about his eating habits too, but it still stung to hear her say it. Maybe if he had been able to see her, he never would have slipped. He started twisting his skull ring around. 

“But I presume you don’t like talking about it.”

“Would you?”

Bianca shrugged. “It isn’t a shameful thing. Neither of them are.”

“Easy for you to say. You don’t have to see Will all the time. You didn’t see his face the other day. You don’t see how everyone around me acts.”

“No one at camp is out to get you, and the ones who do judge you aren’t worth your time. Will isn’t one of those people. You know he cares about you, even if you deny it up and down.”

Nico hadn’t felt cared for in a very long time. They started walking again, Nico kicking at rocks as they went. 

“You’re changing the subject. You still haven’t told me why I can’t be here.”

She rolled her eyes. “As if you’ve never changed the subject in a conversation.” Nico sighed. “But if you really want a reason so badly, you’re not supposed to be here because this isn’t a place for the living. You shouldn’t be anywhere near dead right now, and yet you’re here.”

“I’m not dead,” he muttered. 

“No. But you’re much closer than you should be.” Nico opened his mouth to respond, but Bianca waved her hand at him. 

“Do you even remember where you were before this?”

He tried to think, but he couldn’t come up with anything. “I don’t know. Was I moping around about Will?”

Her expression hardened. “You need to trust him, Nico. He can’t help you if you don’t trust him. He really, really trusts you. And you came to find him today, not the other way around, so some part of you wants to trust him too.”

Nico looked over at her, trying to think of a response, but then the scene shifted. Black splotches tore apart the colors of the city. One of them split Bianca in half. Something was pulling him back, away from her, away from Venice. The ground didn’t exist anymore. The familiar sounds and scents and sights disappeared. The last thing he saw before the darkness took over was Bianca’s face, smiling wistfully in his direction.

He woke up mumbling her name. Tears had plastered a few stray hairs to his cheeks. At first, he panicked, thinking that there was nothing around him but darkness. He started wondering if he really had died, but then his eyes adjusted to the moonlight coming in through the window and he realized he was in the infirmary. He tried to raise his hands so he could wipe the tears away, but one arm seemed to be wrapped in a bandage and the other had an IV in it. He tensed at the thought of some tube hiding in his veins, but he relaxed when he realized that he couldn’t really feel it. His body ached all over. Slowly but surely his memories came back to him: he and Will’s conversation, Will getting upset, the world disappearing. 

He choked back a sob, which only served to anger his dry throat. He had felt helpless hundreds of times in his short demigod life, but this feeling was new. Lying in the infirmary knowing that he had put himself there was almost too much. Loneliness didn’t come close to describing it. He didn’t think there was a right word. Tears continued to drip down the sides of his face, pooling uncomfortably by his ears. The scene with Bianca hadn’t been real either, he now knew. She had chosen to be reborn over a year ago, so he couldn’t have seen her as a ghost even if he had wanted to. Her words echoed in his head anyway. Trust Will. Let things go. 

The sound of soft snoring reached Nico’s ears. A twinge of panic hit his chest, and he turned his head slowly to see if there were any other patients near him. To his surprise, he saw Will Solace slumped in a chair next to him. His veins thawed. He couldn’t help the slight smile that invaded his features. The panic shifted to something that resembled dread, but mostly he was relieved to see Will there at all. He didn’t know what time it was, but it was definitely too late for Will to still be on duty. Nico’s stomach fluttered at the thought that Will probably hadn’t left his side since he collapsed. 

Being in the hospital made Nico feel like a weird weight had been lifted off his chest even if the idea of recovering stressed him out like nothing else ever had. It sounded harder than anything he had ever done, and that was a long list. But at least now he had gotten himself here. Will knew now, and that had been one of the hardest parts. At least now, someone—a few someones—were holding him accountable. It would be a lot harder for him to sabotage himself now. 

A gasp pulled him out of his thoughts. Nico looked over at Will again to see the other boy finally awake and staring at him with eyes as wide as saucers. Nico didn’t react, even when Will shot his hand up to wipe away something wet-looking from his chin.

“You’re awake,” Will said, straightening himself in the chair. 

Nico nodded as much as he dared. “Is that a surprise?” His voice sounded like it had been through three blenders. Will didn’t say anything, but he looked ready to start crying. 

“Can you turn on a light or something? The dark is kind of… freaking me out.” Nico hated how stupid and ironic that sounded, but Will got up and turned on a lamp in the corner without any sign of judgement. 

There were many more things connected to him than he had previously thought. An IV was stuck in Nico’s left arm, which also happened to be bandaged. What he had originally thought was an IV on his other arm looked a lot more complex. His eyes followed the two tubes up to see three bags hanging off a metal pole. Nico frowned. The third tube led up to his face. He reached up gingerly and noticed for the first time the tube that was taped to his face and disappeared into his nose. His eyes widened. 

“Please don’t pull at it.” There was a twinge of panic in Will’s voice. “It was hard enough to get it in in the first place, and I really don’t want to damage your throat any more trying to do it again.”

“What is it then? What is any of this?”

Will bit his lip as if he were afraid of saying what they were doing to him. “That one is an NG tube. It goes straight into your stomach for, uh, feeding you.” His face turned red at his own words. Nico’s stomach sank a bit, and he mentally cursed at it. 

“The other thing you haven’t had before is a PICC line. It’s a tube that runs up your arm and into your heart, basically. Liquid nutrition has been going in there, and then normal medicines and stuff have been going in through the IV. The bandages are just for your wrist. You broke it when you fell. Landed on it with your full weight.” He waited, looking like he was waiting for Nico to freak out, but he didn’t, at least visibly. The idea of food of any sort sliding through his veins made Nico feel queasy. He tried to ignore it.

“Can I sit up?” 

Will started to stutter something that sounded like an apology for not helping him up earlier, and Nico suppressed a smile. His back complained for a second as it tried to hold his weight, but it stopped after Will piled what seemed like twenty pillows behind him. Nico’s hips thanked him for the change in position. 

“You’ve been out for four days,” Will said as he pressed a glass of water into Nico’s waiting hands. 

Nico flinched. “That’s a long time.”

Will nodded, his face pale. “Yeah. You, uh…” He stared down at his hands. Nico could see them shaking.

“Well, you passed out on the steps but you weren’t waking up. Broke your wrist when you fell. And then you had a, uhm… you had a seizure.” Nico went cold. “And then… a heart attack.” He said the last few words so softly that Nico could almost pretend he hadn’t heard them. The ever so familiar sensation of a panic attack strangled him. He could hear the monitors attached to him beeping faster as his heart rate shot into the clouds. Fear splashed across Will’s face. He reached forward to take Nico’s hand, but stopped a few inches away. Without thinking much, Nico grabbed his hand instead. 

The attack lasted a little shorter than usual. Nico was almost certain it was because of the pressure Will kept on his hand and the way Will’s thumb slid back and forth on his knuckles and the soft words Will whispered into his ear. Even after Nico had stopped hyperventilating, he didn’t let go. Will was his anchor, and if he let go, Nico was certain he would slip into the sea.

“I’m sorry,” Nico muttered. “I didn’t mean to—”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s not like you can control it anyway.”

“No, I mean…” Nico curled his unoccupied fist into the sheets. “For everything. Literally everything.” The tears had returned and were dripping rapidly down his face. “For running away at the doctor’s appointment, for the forest, for taking so long to come back here, for making you worry so much, for making you take care of me—”

“Nico.” Will squeezed his hand. “No offense, but I could not possibly care less about any of that right now. I almost… We almost lost you. All I care about right now is you being here with me, and you being okay. Besides…” He sighed. “It takes two people to fight. I chased you into the woods. I shoved you first. I nearly didn’t let you into the infirmary when you came for help, and I probably would have walked right in without another glance at you if you hadn’t… you know.”

They fell into silence. Nico had never even thought to blame Will for any of their fights, and Will’s admission of guilt only affirmed that Nico knew it wasn’t his fault. He would’ve thought that Will was just trying to be nice if all of Will’s emotions weren’t plastered on his face. Nico had never seen him look so defeated. 

“You… You can’t possibly blame yourself for this.”

Will shrugged. “I don’t know. If I had caught it earlier or maybe if I had taken better care of you before maybe things would be different. I can’t help but think you wouldn’t have to be here right now if I had done something differently before.”

Nico’s heart shattered. People had been telling Nico how much Will cared about him since the war had ended, but he had never quite believed it. He had started so many fights with Will that Nico couldn’t fathom the idea of him still caring about it. He had fought with Will to build up his own walls, to lock Will out to keep him from seeing everything inside. It hadn’t worked. Will only came back from each fight more dedicated. He cared more than ever before. Nico could see it in his eyes. 

The infamous butterflies started fluttering in his stomach again. 

“It has never been your fault,” Nico said. “Everything in my head… that predates you. There’s been so much in my life leading up to this.” He gestured to himself. “And honestly, I would have been so much worse if you weren’t here.”

Will nodded, but he didn’t look convinced. Nico bit his lip. The glass of water he had set back on the table had remained untouched. Unsure of what else to say, he finally took a sip. The minute he set the cup down the water shot back up his throat. Before he knew it, he was gagging and spitting. Tanish liquid coated his blanket and his hospital gown. The smell of stomach acid made it impossible for him to stop gagging. Will went into doctor mode in less than a second. He handed Nico a towel as Nico sputtered curses and apologies.

“Gods, Will, I—”

“Please don’t say sorry,” Will said as he crossed the room to dig through a supply cabinet. Nico swore he could see the beginnings of a smile on his face. “What’s the point in saying sorry for things you can’t control?”

He handed Nico a second towel and set a fresh hospital gown on the bedside table. He started to disconnect all the tubes from Nico so Nico could change. 

“That’s actually why you have the PICC line and the NG. I needed to get nutrition into you so I started with the TPN, but I thought it’d be better for you to start getting used to having actual substance in your stomach so I put the tube in. Your stomach didn’t really process it though, at first. It was just making you bloated and… anyway, I stopped that and went back to the PICC line. I’ve been giving you a bit from the NG every day to see if your stomach can tolerate it. Sometimes it does. Sometimes,” Will gestured to the vomit-soaked towel, “not so much.”

If Nico had had enough energy his face probably would have turned bright red, but as it was he just shrugged and dimly wished he could evaporate. 

“Come on. Let’s get you changed.”

With Will’s help, he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stood. Purple and red spots danced across his vision. He inhaled sharply, earning him a concerned look from Will, but soon enough the spots faded and his nerves calmed down.

“The, uhm… the gown opens on the back.” Nico’s forehead scrunched up in confusion before he realized what Will was trying to say: Will would have to take the gown off of him. Nico knew that Will had seen him shirtless a number of times at all their check-ups, but this felt different. Will had never seen him this vulnerable, this destroyed. He wasn’t sure he was ready for that, but he knew he couldn’t get the gown off himself with all the things in his arms and his permanent state of weakness. 

“I’ll try not to look. Promise.”

Bianca’s words from the dream echoed in his head. He could trust Will. If he couldn’t trust Will, he couldn’t trust anyone.

“Just do what you have to, Solace.” Will’s features slackened in shock, but Nico turned before he could say anything. His stomach was doing jumping jacks. Will was clearly trying not to touch him as he undid the buttons, but he couldn’t completely succeed. Will’s hands were boiling against his skin. Wherever he touched Nico, Nico’s skin tingled. He bit his lip, trying not to think about Will’s eyes inspecting his skin. He really tried not to think about how Will had gotten him into the first gown while he was out. Will pulled the gown away, leaving Nico naked except for a pair of underwear. 

Nico was glad that there wasn’t a mirror around for him to judge himself in. His imagination was active enough as it was. It didn’t take much time for Nico to imagine a full map of his body, complete with all his scars and gross imperfections. He imagined his swollen stomach, his stick thin and yet somehow inflated arms, his distended rib cage that still somehow looked fat to him. He heard Will shuffling around behind him.

“It’s disgusting, isn’t it?”

Will stopped moving. Nico imagined him staring, considering. “You’re a lot of things, Nico di Angelo, but disgusting and ugly aren’t on that list.”

This time Nico blushed. He wasn’t sure he believed him, but even the chance that Will wasn’t repulsed by him was enough to make his stomach calm down a little. Will slipped the new gown over Nico’s arms.

“It isn’t about vanity, you know.” Nico didn’t know what possessed him to say it, but the words were already out and he couldn’t take them back. Will lowered Nico back onto the bed and had started reconnecting him to all the tubes before he spoke. 

“Yeah. I know.” He pressed a button on one of the machines and medicine started to drip into Nico’s IV again. “I mean, there still wouldn’t be anything wrong with it if it was, but I figured your case would be a bit more complex than that. I may not know nearly as much about stuff like this as I should, but I do know that a lot of the time vanity isn’t at the core of it.”

Will sat next to him. The yellowish light from the lamp made his blue eyes stand out even more. Staring at his eyes made Nico want to grab Will by the collar and kiss him senseless even though that was 100% a bad idea. Will’s eyes begged Nico to trust him. At the same time, they were patient and soft, and Nico wanted to drown in them.

He decided to take the dive. 

“My life has been sort of...awful,” Nico started, careful not to take his eyes off of Will. He didn’t sense any judgement. Taking a deep breath, he started through the story of his life. It was more cathartic than he expected. He knew Will had heard some of it before, from rumors here or there, but tracing through every detail seemed vital to Nico. By the time he had reached the end, Nico had experienced every emotion known to man. But whether he cried or laughed or got angry, Will’s expression never changed. Nico was shaking as he forced the last words out. 

To Nico’s surprise, Will grabbed his hand again. Nico didn’t pull away.

Will looked like he was choosing his words carefully. “When I said that you were many things, I didn’t know how right I was.” He shook his head in bewilderment. “You’re literally the bravest person I’ve ever met.”

Nico certainly didn’t feel brave. Nothing he had done felt brave in the moment. Running from camp and Percy had been cowardly. Trying to find the Doors of Death on his own had been idiotic. He definitely didn’t feel brave now. He felt stuck and alone and useless, but Will looked sincere. 

Nico sat up a bit more and adjusted himself, his hand never leaving Will’s.

“The whole eating thing started after the jar incident. When I was stuck there, I had no control over anything, but especially over what I ate. I lived on magic pomegranate seeds for Zeus’ sake. After I got back I tried to eat again but…” The tears were back. “I finally had control again so I decided to do something with it, and it was the only thing I felt like I could control, and now… Now I can’t stop myself.”

There were tears in the corners of Will’s eyes too. His expression looked like there were a thousand things he wanted to say.

“Thank you for telling me,” Will said after a couple minutes of terrifying silence. He squeezed Nico’s hand. Anxiety was working its way back into Nico’s body. Will sounded sad, and upset. Nico hated that he had been the one to make him feel that way.

“I’m sorry,” Nico said, his voice shaking a little. 

Will’s lips perked up a little. “What did I say about saying sorry?”

Nico bit his lip. He didn’t have any other words. He was still trembling. When he looked back up at Will, Will was staring out the window, a distant look in his eyes. 

“You’re not the only one who struggles with your head, Nico.”

“I… I didn’t mean to make myself seem overly important or—”

Will smiled a little. “No, that’s not what I meant. It’s not like you to think that. I just meant, you know… some people may get it more than you think.”

Nico scrunched his eyebrows together in confusion. Will let go of his hand only to take it again by the wrist. His eyes were locked back on Nico’s as if he was waiting for Nico to pull away. Slowly, Will guided Nico’s hand under his shirt and let it rest on the side of his ribcage. Under his fingertips, Nico could feel faint lines of scar tissue far too methodical to be from any monster. His eyes widened. 

“You—”

“They’re old,” Will assured him. “The most recent ones are from the Battle of Manhattan, when we, uh, lost Michael.”

Nico was ashamed to realize that he rarely thought about Will’s older brothers, Michael and Lee. When they died, he hadn’t known Will and barely knew anyone at camp. He had never thought about how Lee and Michael’s deaths had affected Will. Now he knew. And now all he wanted to do was hold on to Will and never let go.

“You seem so put-together,” Nico muttered. His thumb was absentmindedly running over Will’s scars. Will’s eyelids fluttered a bit at the touch.

He smiled sadly. “Yeah. I can keep up appearances. As head medic and all, I kind of have to.” He sighed, straightening in his chair. “But it’s better now, to some extent.”

“How did you stop?” Nico asked timidly as Will rested their hands back in Nico’s lap.

“It was hard. Really, really hard.” Will’s voice was surprisingly calm. “And there are still days where it’s all I want to do. When Octavian died it was hard to keep clean, but I did it. Whenever I feel like I need to do it,” his eyes jumped from Nico, to the window, and back again, “I shoot arrows.”

Nico’s heart stammered. His head shot back to the other day when he watched Will practice at the archery range. What had he been upset about? Had he shot arrows after the forest? He didn’t want to think about Will being stuck here the past few days, watching over him, unable to go out and shoot. He remembered how many bullseyes Will had hit the other day. How many arrows had he shot before so that he was good enough to do that? Nico didn’t want to know. Nico opened his mouth to say something, but no words would come out. He looked down at their hands, which were still intertwined. 

After what seemed like hours of silence, Will cleared his throat. “I love talking to you, Nico, I really do, but both of us should probably get some more rest.”

Nico stared wordlessly at Will for a minute before tearing his eyes away. He hadn’t realized how exhausted he still was. And Will looked ready to fall over.

“Uh, yeah. Sounds good.”

Will glanced over at the medicine bags again, presumably to check if they were still working right. He seemed satisfied and started to reach for his jacket. 

“I should probably go back to the Apollo cabin,” he muttered, a hint of melancholy in his voice. “Kayla and Austin are really worried about me. They’re worried about you too, of course, but they, uh, haven’t seen much of me in the past week.” He blushed at the admission Nico had expected: Will hadn’t left since Nico’s incident.

Will waved awkwardly and started towards the door. The buds of panic in Nico’s chest suddenly grew at the thought of being alone. Will turned to walk out of the room. 

“Wait.” Will turned, surprise plastered on his face. Nico didn’t blame him. He had surprised himself too. 

“Can you… Can you stay with me?”

The last thing Nico expected Will to do was smile, but that was exactly what the son of Apollo did. He walked back over to Nico slowly, as if he was afraid of Nico changing his mind. 

“I’d be happy to.”

“You sure?”

He nodded. “Kayla and Austin can wait another night.”

Will settled back into his chair and took Nico’s hand. A flower bloomed in Nico’s chest. A part of Nico wanted Will to curl up in bed with him. He wanted Will’s arms wrapped around him. He wanted Will to run his fingers through his hair and keep telling him that everything was okay. He wanted to feel Will’s heartbeat on his back to remind him that Will was real and that Will wasn’t going to leave him. But he couldn’t ask for any of that. Having Will next to him in a chair would have to do, at least for tonight. 

“I’m glad you’re awake,” Will murmured, his eyes already closing. “I was really scared.”

Nico smiled a little, though he wasn’t sure why. “I’m glad you’re here. Thanks.” Will made a little sound of appreciation, and Nico’s heart fluttered.

He fell asleep with Will’s hand in his, and it was the easiest sleep he had had in years.


	10. We're Just Friends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Trigger warning*  
> Talk of weight gain

The next two weeks were simultaneously the hardest and best two weeks of Nico’s life. Will had released him from the infirmary after a week of Nico doing nothing but sleeping, sitting, and getting fed. Will had originally planned on letting Nico out after three days, but Nico had panicked so much at the thought that Will worried Nico would run away and revert back to his old habits if he left. Even after a week, Nico hadn’t been sure he was ready to leave. Being in the infirmary with Will watching over his every move and constantly making sure he was okay had been somewhat refreshing and much needed, even if it annoyed Nico at times. It was easier for Nico to focus on getting better when he didn’t have to see anyone except Will. Nico had told him after their midnight conversation that he didn’t want Percy or Jason or anyone else to come and visit him, and Will had obliged. There was no doubt that Nico had grown both stronger and bigger since he had first arrived at the Big House. Nico had seen it in all the test results that he forced Will to explain to him in vivid detail. The static that had been in his head for so long was waning. He hadn’t come close to passing out since the first time he had woken up. Will seemed happy to see Nico feeling better, and Nico was glad about it too, but on a day to day basis, it was almost intolerable. As soon as Nico had started to notice the effects of his new caloric intake on his weight, he had flipped out. Will tried his best to combat all of Nico’s negative thoughts, but he couldn’t fix everything. Nico would still shut down and would still yell at Will and would still tell him to leave him alone. Nico had thrown full plates of food to the ground and had tried to pull all the tubes out of him numerous times, but every time he screamed or cried or broke things or struggled, Will came back. During the whole week, he only left Nico’s side to shower and get food; he had even put a sleeping bag on the floor so Nico wouldn’t have to be alone at night. Nico had complained about this decision at first, but he had ended up being thankful for it. Will was always there when Nico needed him, and Nico appreciated him greatly for that. 

Nico had been worried that after he left the infirmary he wouldn’t see Will anymore. He figured that once he was out of immediate danger, Will wouldn’t care so much about him. Will obviously had better things to do than take care of him. Boy was he wrong. Will no longer spent 24 hours a day with him, but Nico still saw him way more than anyone else at camp. Percy and Jason and Annabeth and Piper visited him, sure, but Will made a point to come see Nico every day, especially outside of meal times. They had been to the lake, the strawberry fields, the training arena, and even both their cabins. Nico always found himself looking forward to Will knocking on his door every day. He liked all his friends just fine, obviously, but Will was different. Obviously. Will comforted him more than anyone else. Will was the only one who could make him forget, even for a moment, that there were things wrong with him and with the world. 

It would have been naïve of Nico to think that Will could magically make him better, but maybe he could make it just a little bit more bearable.

Even though Will annoyed him to no end and even though Nico’s mind had tried so many times to blame Will for making him gain weight, Nico had kept falling for him. Hard. Spending a week straight with Will had made the two of them a lot closer. There was no point in Nico lying to himself about it anymore. He had to exercise vast amounts of self-control not to grab Will and kiss him even when Will was scolding him. Nico couldn’t get over how happy the son of Apollo made him. It didn’t help that Will was by far the most attractive person at camp. Maybe that was just Nico’s tunnel vision. Nico had almost told him how he felt while Will had been listening to his lungs one day. The hand that hadn’t been holding the end of the stethoscope had been pressed flat against his shoulder. The more irresponsible and lovesick part of Nico had wanted Will to slide his hand down to his chest or his stomach, but even Will’s grip on his shoulder was driving him crazy. He had gotten all the way to ‘Will, I’ before his brain had started functioning again and he had frozen. Will looked at him with concerned eyes, and that had made Nico stop looking at him all together. Nico hadn’t opened his mouth again for a couple hours.

Today marked fourteen days since Nico had woken up in the infirmary. He was growing incredibly bored. All Nico wanted to do was stab a couple of dummies, but Will had banned him from pretty much all physical activity aside from walking back and forth to necessary places. He couldn’t really complain, logically, at least. Logically, he knew that he would run out of energy quickly if he did so much as mutilate a single dummy. That knowledge didn’t stop him from rolling his eyes at Will whenever Will forbade him from doing anything that required more exertion than using a hot glue gun. The annoyance was more of a defense mechanism than a real response. Nico didn’t know how to talk to Will half the time, so he always reverted back to being off-putting and annoying.

Since Nico couldn’t do anything Camp Half-Blood was designed to have him do (except arts and crafts, which he despised), his new favorite activity was watching kids try and fail to scale the climbing wall.

Will loathed the thing. Nico had heard story after story from him about all the injuries he had had to treat as a result of it. Nico’s personal favorite story was when a Hecate kid had accidentally turned one of the spikes she had been holding onto into a teddy bear and then fell off, breaking her wrist in the process. Will glowered every time he saw it and every time he saw Nico watching it. Nico swore on the Styx that it was fun. Will adamantly refused to climb it. 

On this particular day, the Athena cabin was taking turns scaling the wall with the Ares cabin. It was highly entertaining to watch how different their attempts were. The Athena kids would watch the wall for a minute or so before attempting to climb it, analyzing the patterns of the spikes and all the other moving parts. When one of them fell, they’d all go back and huddle amongst themselves and try to figure out what went wrong. Over time, they’d get father and farther up the wall as they pieced it together. Annabeth would throw out words of encouragement coupled with bits of strategy. Nico had seen her climb it three times today alone. The Ares cabin, on the other hand, had no plan except to attack the wall. They kept falling off, resulting in at least three injuries Nico knew Will would gripe about later. The Athena kids snickered at them. The Ares kids yelled death threats. Nico smiled thinly. 

After the last Athena kid had tried and failed to climb the wall, Annabeth dismissed them for a few hours of free time until dinner. Sensing that the entertainment was over, Nico looked down and started picking at his nails. He had no real desire to get up. The sun was nice. He was pleasantly distracted until a shadow crossed over him. Annabeth stood in front of him, stretching her arms.

“Hello?”

Annabeth smiled down at him. “Hey. How are you feeling?”

Nico furrowed his eyebrows. He liked Annabeth just fine, and he respected her insanely, but they didn’t talk much, much less asked each other how they were doing. Part of him was a little afraid she was still silently judging him about his former crush on her boyfriend. And then another part of him was still afraid of her judging him for everything wrong with his head. His encounter with her and Jason was still stuck in his head.

“Uh, fine right now, I guess.”

She offered her hand to him. He hesitated, then took it. His skin crawled a bit as he tried to think of any reason she would have to judo-flip him.

“Percy mentioned to me that you wanted to redecorate your cabin. Something about the coffins being a little too much?”

Nico’s face flushed. He needed no reminders about how stupid his cabin was, or about how he had been the one to at least start designing it. “I might have mentioned it.”

“I can help you out if you want.” She rested her hand on her hip, still smiling. “I did redesign Mount Olympus, you know.”

Nico smiled a bit. “So I’ve heard. Yeah, that’d be cool, I guess. If you have time and all.”

She beamed. “Don’t worry about that. I work quickly.” She glanced over to the cabins. “Would you mind showing me what I have to work with?”

He froze for a second. People didn’t really come into his cabin. Any time Jason or Percy came in it was because they had come in without permission. Will had been inside too, of course, but that was different. The coffins and the dark and the bones tended to freak people out. Then again, Annabeth had seen Tartarus. A couple femurs wouldn’t freak her out. 

“Okay,” he responded hesitantly. “If you want.”

“Awesome.”

They walked to the Hades cabin with little conversation. Nico asked how training was going. She said it was fine. Annabeth asked how his days were. He said they were uninteresting. Nico couldn’t kick how weird this seemed. He couldn’t fathom why she wanted to hang out with a guy who had a crush on her boyfriend, or why she wanted to hang out with a sick person, or why she wanted to spend extra time with him to redecorate his cabin. Annabeth was nice, but Nico felt like few people were that nice.

Nico stopped a few feet from the door. His cabin looked so dark compared to the ones around it, not that he minded the black.

“The outside isn’t bad,” Annabeth said. “It wouldn’t hurt to add a few windows though.”

He shrugged. “I like the dark.” He added a ‘usually’ in his head. “It can be comforting as a child of Hades.”

She laughed a little. “Fair.” She looked over at him, her eyes sparkling. “Well, lead the way.” Nico sighed and pushed open the door. 

“Surprise!”

Nico’s heart rate instantly shot up. He stumbled back into Annabeth, who in turn shoved him farther into the cabin. On instinct, he reached for his sword. In a few seconds, his eyes adjusted to the dimness of his cabin, and he saw Percy, Jason, and Piper standing in front of him.

“What the—”

“We threw you a party!” Percy exclaimed, throwing an arm over Nico’s shoulders. Nico grimaced at the touch. 

“I… What…” He paused, waiting for his heart to slide back into his chest. “A party?”

Jason chuckled. “Yes, Nico, a party. Ever heard of one?”

Nico tried to hit him but missed by a lot. He knew he was blushing profusely. 

“I’m not stupid,” he mumbled. “But why is there a party in my cabin?”

“End of summer bash,” Piper said. “Since Percy, Annabeth, Jason, and I are all going back to school soon, we figured it might be nice to have one last celebration with all of us together.”

Nico’s stomach sank a little. With everything going on in the past two weeks, he had honestly forgotten that everyone had to go back to school. Nico had no plans of the sort. Even if he had been in a physical state that was able to go to a normal educational institute, Nico didn’t feel ready for school after the last couple of years he had had. School probably wouldn’t even be safe for him. Chiron had something set up with Malcolm to tutor people anyway. 

Nico quickly tallied up the days in his head. It was Wednesday. Everyone was leaving on Saturday, the morning after the last campfire of the summer. 

“We can’t waste time being sad now!” Percy said, sensing Nico’s change in mood. “We’re here to have a party, so that’s what we’re gonna do.”

Before Nico could protest, Percy grabbed his wrist and dragged him deeper into the cabin. The four of them really had gone all out. Orange streamers were draped across the walls along with a few matching balloons. He spotted something that looked suspiciously like a piñata sitting on one of the bunks. A tray of cupcakes had been set up on a makeshift table. 

Jason shoved an orange party hat into Nico’s hands. The color offended him. 

“There is no way I’m putting this on my head.” Percy snapped another one on his head from behind. Nico flinched at the sound of the elastic. “Percy—”

“Oh, come on. It looks nice on you,” Annabeth said.

Nico scowled. “If by nice you mean I look like a nine-year-old, then sure, I look nice.”

Piper put her own hat on. “Then we’ll all look like nine-year-olds together.” The other three put their hats on as well. Nico thought all of them looked stupid, but they vaguely reminded him of all the parties he had never had as a kid. As much as Nico didn’t want to, he smiled.

“Annabeth and I made some cupcakes,” Percy said, dragging Nico over to a table. “We even took the liberty of making you one with black icing.” He offered Nico a cupcake, and Nico’s stomach seized. The idea of so much sugar at one time scared him even though he had gotten more used to eating. His smile faltered. Jason swooped in to save him. 

“You don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to,” he said. “We just figured we would make one just in case.”

Nico could tell he was putting them in an uncomfortable situation and he instantly felt guilty. He hated making everyone feel out of place. He couldn’t blame them though. Expecting them to understand what was going on with him and to then expect them to feel okay talking about it would have been unfair to them. If he didn’t understand his head, how could they?

He glanced down at the ground. The cupcake did look good.

“Thanks,” he said almost inaudibly as he took the cupcake. “Thanks for making them, also.” Before he could lose his nerve, he stuck his tongue into the icing. Sweetness slid across his tongue. To his displeasure, he thought about spitting it out. Jason smiled at him reassuringly. Nico turned so he couldn’t see him. 

“There’s another surprise,” Percy said, grinning. He pointed to the floor in front of Hades’ shrine. Nico’s mouth fell open. Mythomagic cards and figurines were strewn across the ground. His breath caught in his throat and he felt tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. 

“What… Where did you get all of this?” He walked towards the game as if pulled by something invisible. 

Annabeth was beaming. “We asked around. Percy had his mom have a lot of it shipped to their apartment, and then she brought it here. Frank told us everything we would need for it.”

Nico was staring at the game. He had yet to close his mouth. He reached for the figurine of Hades. His mind spun back to three years ago when Percy had first tried to give the same statue to Nico, when he had screamed at him and thrown it back and split the ground open. Tears blurred his vision.

“It probably isn’t quite as much stuff as you had when you collected the stuff, but—”

“It’s great,” Nico interrupted, setting the figure back down and wiping at his eyes. “It’s great, and I love it and all, but why?”

“We’re gonna play it, silly,” Piper said. 

Nico blanched and took a step back. “Oh, um… You guys don’t want to play this kids game.”

Percy shrugged, moving to sit cross-legged next to the cards. “Why not? We just got through, like, the worst summer of our lives. It’d be nice to fight some monsters in the form of cards and mini figures.” He flipped through the card stack. “Is there a Hera card? I’d love to rip it in half.” Nico smiled a little. Everyone else laughed.

“I guess if you guys really want to…”

The five of them settled in a circle around the cards. Nico tried to explain the game as best he could, but he was sure he wasn’t doing a great job. His hands joined him as he talked. The feel of the cards in his hands reminded him of better, simpler times, but surprisingly it didn’t make him sad. He remembered the couple of times Bianca had played with him and smiled. She would love to see him playing now. He caught Percy smiling at him a couple times, clearly remembering the first time Nico and him had met. ‘Does Zeus really have lightning bolts that do 600 damage?’ Nico had asked. Percy had stared at him in pity and confusion. Nico had always wished he could go back to that day and run away with Bianca before Percy had found them and dragged them into this crazy world. Nico didn’t feel that way anymore. That surprised him. Sure, his life as a demigod had been hard and terrible most of the time, but if he hadn’t met Percy, he never would have made these friends or met Will or made a difference. Nico smiled as he shuffled the cards, for once wanting to be nowhere other than where he was. 

Their game was interrupted by a knock at the door. Nico looked up at the others, the card he had been about to play waiting in his hand. 

“Did you guys invite anyone else?”

They shook their heads.

“It better not be another stupid prophecy or something,” Percy muttered.

Annabeth rolled her eyes, but she looked a little queasy at the thought. “It’s probably a camper or something. We all are counselors, remember?”

Nico shrugged and stood up, taking his cards with him. “I don’t trust you not to look at my cards so they’re coming with me,” he said, eyeing Percy. He looked offended. Annabeth swatted at him. Nico grabbed his cupcake too, slightly afraid that Percy would take it.

Will was standing on the other side of the door. Nico’s stomach did a backflip. Will smiled at him. 

“Hey.”

“Hi.” The sun made Will’s hair look even more distracting than usual.

“I was just wondering if you wanted to do something before dinner,” Will said. His eyes landed on the party hat Nico had forgotten he was wearing, and his lips curled into a smile. Nico’s face burned. 

“Uh…” Nico glanced behind him at his friends. “I would, but Jason and everyone threw a little ‘end of summer’ party.” He glanced at his feet in discomfort. “Sorry.”

“Ah. So that’s what the hat is for.”

Nico smiled a bit behind the blush. “I promise I’m not wearing it by choice.”

“Don’t worry. It looks cute on you.” Nico blushed even harder. Will looked down at the cupcake he was holding. Nico expected him to make a comment about eating, but he didn’t. 

“I never liked black icing much. It always tastes weird, like there’s too much dye in it.” Nico started to mumble something about how red icing was the worst, but he gave up when his words weren’t forming sentences anymore.

They stared at each other in silence for a few seconds. Nico didn’t know what to say, and Will clearly didn’t either. He almost wanted to invite Will in but he didn’t trust himself to not become a stuttering mess in front of everyone. Will was wearing a camp shirt instead of his usual scrubs and Nico didn’t like that it made him look even better. His eyes briefly caught on Will’s lips before Nico realized that he was acting like a lovesick idiot. 

Will coughed. Nico hadn’t been paying attention to what the other boy was doing. With his luck, Will had noticed exactly what he had been staring at. “So, uh, I’ll see you at dinner?” Nico nodded. Will did an awkward bow before turning and starting back to his cabin. Nico watched him go, waiting for the butterflies to leave his stomach. 

When he turned back into the cabin, the others were grinning at him. Annabeth and Piper were looking at each other like they knew some big secret. Jason was staring at him like a proud parent, and Percy was smirking at him. 

“So that’s your type.”

Nico glared at him. “We’re just friends.”

Jason raised his eyebrows. “Maybe now, but he totally likes you. And I have a feeling that that’s mutual.”

Nico looked down at his shoes and bit his lip. “It’s not like that—”

“That’s the biggest lie I’ve ever heard.” Piper said. Nico suddenly regretted having a daughter of Aphrodite as a friend. 

He resumed his glare. “So what if I like him? He isn’t going to want to date me after—”

“Are you kidding?” Jason laughed. “I’m not as in tune to crushes or whatever as Piper is, and even I can tell that he likes you.”

Nico huffed and took his place in the circle again. He really didn’t feel like talking about Will right now, but his friends weren’t going to let him off the hook. 

“There isn’t any reason you should be afraid,” Annabeth said. “The world today is a lot different than it was in the thirties, and if anyone here gives you trouble—”

“I’ll drown them.” Annabeth rolled her eyes at her boyfriend. 

Nico shrugged. “I know you guys keep saying that, but if there is someone… ugly about it, then I’m stuck here with them.” He fidgeted with his ring. “He asked me out a couple weeks ago. Well, to the campfire, so I think it was a date, but—”

“And you said no?” Jason gaped. 

“Not exactly no… I just stammered and didn’t really answer.” Nico stared at his lap. “Plus I had a few other things on my mind.”

“Are you and Will just going to flirt with each other and skirt around this whole thing until you go off to school in a year or so?” Percy asked. “From personal experience, demigod life can change with a coin toss. Why wait?”

Nico tossed a card down in an attempt to continue the game. No one paid it any attention. “Whatever. I’ll think about it. If any of you intervene, I swear to all the Gods—”

Piper put a hand on his shoulder. “Chill out, Nico. If you’re not ready, you’re not ready. But if you want to,” she squeezed, “I think you and Will would make a really cute couple.”


	11. You Intrigue Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *trigger warning*  
> Talk of weight gain and contains specific weights

Nico woke up the next day with a dangerous amount of confidence. Maybe it was the after effects of the party finally hitting him, or maybe it had something to do with the line of Mythomagic figurines stacked on a nearby bunk, or maybe it was because it had been the first time in a long time that his nightmares hadn’t kept him from sleep. He didn’t really care about what had caused it. He was just glad to have some sort of motivation to get out of bed that wasn’t just ‘he had to.’ He almost went as far as to put on the one Camp Half-Blood shirt he had, but decided against it when he realized how many looks he’d get from other people. 

Today would be his first time going back to the infirmary since he had been released. He would get to see Will, and he would get to see Will in the Big House without having to hide anything. It wouldn’t be right to say the idea of a doctor’s visit excited him, but at least he could probably make it through the appointment without wanting to self-destruct. Getting the opportunity to maybe hang out with Will after was motivation enough for getting through the appointment. 

As confident and excited as he was, nerves still made his skin crawl.

Will wasn’t at breakfast when Nico showed up, so he sat by himself at the Hades table. He didn’t really mind being alone. As much as he had enjoyed the company and constant presence of his friends and Will, people were tiring. Watching people while he ate was surprisingly fun. Percy and Jason had apparently stopped trying to flex their war hero statuses and were sitting at their own tables. Annabeth and Malcolm were pouring over a book. Piper was braiding a feather into a younger camper’s hair. The only person at the Hypnos table was fast asleep. Travis and Connor were eyeing one of the Hecate campers, snickering. Nico didn’t watch to see what the prank was.

He managed to swallow what Will would deem an appropriate amount of food with minimum gagging and only some internal screaming. He wished for about the millionth time that his week in the infirmary had fixed all of his problems. Nico had never been good at ignoring the thoughts in his head. When you were a demigod, the irrational thoughts could keep you alive in battle when they were things like ‘run straight into the giant, unarmed.’ Nico had just happened to pull the short straw and had the stupid thoughts that wanted him dead by his own hand. Will had threatened to throw jelly beans at him every time he vocalized one in the wrong way during their weird therapy sessions; Nico was almost willing to let him. Forcing himself to eat sucked, especially when Will wasn’t around for reinforcement, but Nico would be lying if he said he wasn’t a teeny bit proud of himself whenever he cleaned a plate, even if doing it hurt his head. He knew Will was proud of him too, and that made it all a little bit more bearable.

Kayla smiled at Nico from the porch as he approached the Big House. She was wearing scrubs instead of normal camp clothes for once, and it sort of weirded Nico out. 

“Long time no see, di Angelo.” She gave him a sideways smile. “Come to see your Prince Charming?”

Nico’s face turned a deep shade of crimson. “Uh, no, I just, I just came for—”

“I’m kidding,” she clarified. “It’s not really my business, even if he is my brother. Not that I care. My mortal parent is a dude too.”

Nico’s blush didn’t go away. He had never really understood Kayla, and this interaction definitely didn’t elucidate anything. Her green hair was cool though. 

She gestured towards the house with her shoulder. “Will’s upstairs. I presume you know your way around?”

He nodded and mumbled something sort of like a thank you before crossing the threshold. There was an unusually high number of campers shuffling from room to room. A couple of people nodded to Nico in acknowledgement, but no one said anything. As he approached the top of the stairs, his head started spinning. Anxiety was such a staple of these visits that it was hard for Nico not to feel it even if he couldn’t think of very many things to stress about. 

He found Will reorganizing a medical cabinet. Will smiled and nearly dropped a bottle of Advil when he saw him. 

“It’s, uh, it’s good to see you,” Will said, his face pink. “Sorry to make you come up here so early, but it’s sort of a busy day for us. The end of the summer session capture the flag game always results in plenty of injuries, so we like to be prepared. I do, at least. My siblings are less enthused. Is Kayla still on the porch?” Nico nodded. Will rolled his eyes a little. “She’s been out there for over half an hour.”

Nico chuckled a little. “She seems content.”

Will made a sound of displeasure. “We’ve gotten more done this morning than I thought we would have by this point, so I guess it’s alright, but…” He tapered off and turned even more pink than he had been before. “Sorry, I’m rambling.”

Nico shrugged. “I don’t mind.” Will opened his mouth as though he wanted to say something else, but turned and led Nico into a nearby exam room without saying anything. 

“Sorry I wasn’t at breakfast. Like I said, we had to get some stuff ready.” He eyed Nico over his clipboard. “Did it go alright?”

Nico’s muscles tensed. “I mean, I guess. It wasn’t enjoyable, but I did it.”

Will smiled. “I had no doubt that you would.” A flash of humor flickered through his features, and Nico’s lip curled up. 

“Was it supposed to be some sort of test, Solace?”

He raised his eyebrows. “No. I would never.” Nico wasn’t entirely sure he should believe him. “It worked out though. Good to know that you aren’t 100% dependent on me.”

The confidence Nico had woken up with fluttered a little bit in his chest. “Maybe not, but it’s a lot better when you’re around.” Nico flushed furiously at his own words, not quite believing they had come out of his mouth. Will looked more shocked. Actually, he looked like he was going to pass out. The smile on his face had morphed into an open-mouthed stare. Nico froze, thinking he had gone too far. Will erased his fears when he stuck the smile back on and punched him jovially in the arm. Nico’s eyes darted to the ground and he bit his lip.

“Today is gonna work a little differently.” Hearing him back in doctor mode made Nico weirdly giddy. “I need to check your vitals and your weight and all that fun stuff, but I want to run the fullest of full panels on your blood and do a slightly more thorough physical than normal. And,” he glanced at Nico nervously, “for the weight thing I’m gonna need you to take everything off except, like, your underwear.”

Nico stiffened as his walls shot up. He wished for the twentieth time today that anxiety would stop making his body react involuntarily. Logically, he didn’t care about Will seeing him. In the week he had spent in the infirmary, Will had seen him mostly naked at least a dozen times, but, just like it had been that first night, this seemed different. Nico was no longer unable to stand up and do things by himself. Nico no longer needed Will to monitor his every move and take care of him. Before, he hadn’t really had a choice. It had been clinical then, and it would be clinical now, but now the lights were bright and the summer was ending and Nico had control over parts of himself and—

“Just like before,” Will promised. “I won’t look until you have the gown on. I’m just a little tentative to weigh you with clothes on because clothes are heavy and people sometimes sneak weight in their pockets—”

“You think I’d cheat?” Anger tinged the edges of his words.

Will paled slightly. “No. No, of course not, I just…” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Nico could tell he was trying to calm himself down to prevent a screaming march from breaking out. 

“I don’t really want to negotiate on this, okay?”

Nico thought about saying something else that would make Will yell at him, but he gave up when he saw Will’s tired and dreadful expression. Nico rolled his eyes.

“Fine. If I freak out and run away, it’s your fault.” Will chuckled a little bit and handed Nico a gown. Nico didn’t stop glaring.

“Are you going to turn around or just stare at me like a creep?” he muttered, turning to face the other way. Footsteps shuffled behind him.

“Of course I’ll turn around, but you don’t really have to be afraid of me.”

“You know I’m not afraid of you,” Nico grumbled. He tossed his shirt a few feet away. “This just sucks.” The sound of his zipper opening echoed through the silent room, making him wince. 

“Yeah. I know.”

Nico fought the urge to laugh. “You don’t really know.” Will said nothing. Nico buttoned a couple of the buttons on the gown and turned back around. Will followed suit. 

“Do I have to look at the number?” Nico asked as he shuffled over to the scale. Will paused for a second, then nodded.

“I think that’d be best. I’ve been reading a lot. Argus brought me some books from the city, and I think the best thing would be for you to see it.”

Nico’s skin grew cold. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

Will smirked a bit. “Doctor’s orders?”

Nico shoved his arm, trying to suppress a smile. Two words shouldn’t have had that effect on him. “You aren’t a real doctor.”

“I’m the closest to one that you’ve got access to.” Will’s blue eyes sparkled, reminding Nico of all the beaches in Italy. “Just get on the scale. I’ll be here if anything happens.”

Having run out of arguments, Nico stepped on the scale. The bar dipped and swayed like it always did, and Will went to work moving the weights to their correct positions. The swaying stopped at 94.

Nico started shaking, then got mad at himself for shaking. “How…” He paused, swallowed, and tried again. “How different is that from last time?”

“The day you passed out you were at 83.”

“And the goal is what?” His voice had grown noticeably quieter. 

“At least 112. Preferably a little more.”

Being 94 pounds freaked Nico out a lot more than he had expected it to. Knowing he had gained weight and seeing the little engraved numbers were two very different things. It seemed so stupid. Nico’s goal had never been explicitly to lose weight. He hadn’t cared about being fat or skinny until the numbers started ticking down. Once they had, the numbers became a lifeline. Numbers meant control. An increase in the numbers meant fear and panic. 83 had been control. A sick form of it, maybe, but control nonetheless. 94 did not mean control. An all-too-familiar burning sensation filled his eyes.

“Nico?”

“I’m fine.” He stepped off the scale before Will could stop him. The bar slammed back down. 

“I’m fine,” he repeated. “It’s just… It’s just…” His eyes started darting back and forth to and from nothing in particular. His breathing picked up.

“We can talk about this if you need to. I know this isn’t—”

“Please not right now. I—I promise I will talk about it later, Will, but please, not right now.” Will nodded after a few tense seconds. Nico looked over at him. His eyes were full of worry. Nico hated himself for making him feel that way.

Even though they were worried, Will’s eyes were surprisingly calming. 

Nico took a shaky breath after a minute of holding his head in his hands. “What’s next?”

They got through most of the rest of the exam with little conversation outside of a few questions about how Nico’s body was functioning. Nico let the other boy do his tests and listen to his heart (which Will said sounded really healthy for having a heart attack a couple of weeks prior) and lungs (which sounded fine as usual) and take his blood (which he didn’t flinch away from this time) without any complaints. He wanted this whole thing to be over, and fast. He didn’t want his interactions with Will to just be him panicking and Will taking care of him. The problem was that he couldn’t figure out how to get out of that cycle. 

Will left to go give Nico’s blood to whoever dealt with that, leaving Nico to put his clothes back on. He couldn’t get the gown off fast enough. Having his jeans and sweatshirt back on made him feel safe. His panic subsided bit by bit. He sat down on the windowsill, twisting his skull ring around his finger. 

The confidence from earlier was muted, but still there, resting under his thoughts like a pillow. If he could just find the right words…

Will strolled back into the room. “The gods must have heard my complaints because Kayla came back in. She said she’d have your bloodwork done by this afternoon.” He ran a hand through his hair. “And then she told me to get out of here for the rest of the day. She says I’ve been working too hard and that I should ‘take some time for myself.’”

Nico recalled his conversation with Kayla on the porch and smiled a little bit.

“She could be right. I mean, when was the last time you did something for fun?”

Will blushed. “Well, I tried yesterday, but you were busy and so I went back to the Big House.”

“I’m sure all the hospital corners you folded thank you.” Will huffed and rolled his eyes. “You’re a workaholic.”

“And under normal circumstances you’re addicted to sword-fighting and raising the dead. We all have our quirks.”

Nico smiled and stood up. “I’ll, uhm, I’ll take you up on that whole ‘doing something’ offer from yesterday.”

Will’s face brightened. “Uh, sure. What do you want to do?”

Nico glanced out the window. The sun was out, as it always was at camp, but today there weren’t even clouds to be seen across the sound. “Want to go for a walk?”

Will grinned and nodded, and in less than a minute they were walking across bright green grass. For the beginning of September, it wasn’t terribly hot outside. The camp was filled with end-of-summer energy. Chiron had relaxed the strictness of classes over the past week to let campers spend more time together before the summer session ended. After everything that had happened this summer, having everyone leave felt even weirder. 

A few campers from the Hermes cabin were talking with Annabeth, presumably making last minute arrangements for capture the flag. Annabeth waved when she saw Nico, then shot him a thumbs up when she saw Will. Nico blushed and turned away.

“So,” he kicked at a rock as they made their way to the lake, “What’re your plans after summer ends?” No sooner had the question left his mouth that he realized he wasn’t sure he was ready for the answer. Nico had never considered the possibility that Will might have somewhere to go to during the school year. He mentally kicked himself. Will’s job wasn’t to take care of him or stay all year. He had a life and a family and probably a school to go to.

To his surprise, Will chuckled. “I’ll just chill out here. Camp needs a medic, right? Kayla and Austin are great, but they like archery and music better than healing. I’ve got a job to do here.”

Nico started twisting his ring again and tried to ignore the growing warmth in his chest. “Do you usually stay all year?”

He shrugged. “Depends on the summer, I guess. Life at home is complicated sometimes.” Neither one of them said anything else until they were sitting on the docks of the canoe lake. In typical fashion, Nico sat with his knees curled up into his chest and Will sat with his feet dangling off the edge. His toes dragged across the surface, creating a web of waves that echoed across the lake. Will looked so calm and so at ease. He looked even better in the sun. His eyes were closed as though he was savoring the world, and Nico wished he knew how it felt to feel like that again.

“I love my mom,” Will said finally. “I really do. She’s great, but my stepdad and my sisters don’t really get it. The demigod thing. They aren’t mean about it or anything, they just don’t know how to handle it. My constant looking over my shoulder freaks then out. I can’t blame them, I guess, but it gets old. I tried to go last year, but with Gaea’s forces popping up everywhere I was putting them in way too much danger. I don’t have many fighting skills to defend them anyway. I had to come back before Thanksgiving. It’s usually just easier for everyone if I stay here.” He opened his eyes and looked over at Nico. His eyes looked a little afraid. 

“And, as if that isn’t enough, there’s also the whole me not being straight thing.”

Nico’s heart skipped a beat, maybe several. “Are your parents… bad about it?”

“No. No, they’re great. I just live in Tiny-Town, Texas. We lived in Austin for a long time, but they moved a couple years ago to a much smaller place. Not the most open-minded town in the world. Just some light bullying at school and stuff, but…” He picked at a splinter on the dock.

The idea of people bullying someone as nice as Will made Nico mad, but part of his head was still stuck on the whole ‘his crush wasn’t straight’ thing. Nico lowered one of his legs. The water was refreshing. Butterflies crawled across his skin. “Yeah. Italy in the thirties wasn’t…” He couldn’t believe what he was saying. “It wasn’t that great either.”

A smile crossed Will’s face. He looked out across the water. “I can imagine. Were you… you know… out?”

Nico’s chest tightened. Talking to Will about any of this seemed crazy. He shouldn’t have been surprised that Will had figured it out given how weird Nico acted every time he was around him, but hearing it confirmed it, and that made him insanely nervous. He took a deep breath. 

“No. That wasn’t an option. It was illegal, and with the war coming I stood a good chance of getting killed. Even once I was in D.C. I didn’t tell anyone. Still illegal. I only ever told Bianca, and she was very insistent that I sort of… kept it to myself.” Will nodded a little bit, his eyes sadder than they had been before. 

“I’m sorry. I can’t imagine.” 

Nico shrugged. “It’s whatever. At least it’s different now, right?”

The waves kept lapping at their feet. Will started to hum, which didn’t help Nico’s composure. Nico took off his other shoe and dipped both feet in the water. Will splashed water on his ankles. Nico smiled a bit and kicked some back. The butterflies were racing around in his stomach. He knew he should tell Will and get it over with, but he had no idea what to say or what he would do no matter what Will said back. Will started to hum, which didn’t help Nico’s composure. 

“Why did you run away from me that day in the woods?” The question took Nico aback. That seemed like another lifetime ago. He kicked at the water.

Now or never. 

“Because—” The words got stuck. He cleared his throat. “Because you terrify me.”

Will turned his head. “Because of the health stuff or something else?”

Nico bit his lip. “That, and because I don’t know what to do around you.” He picked at a splinter on the dock, desperate to keep his eyes away from Will. “You make me feel really weird.”

“A good weird?”

He tried to focus on the water, on the way it moved and rippled. “I think so. If that’s even a thing.” He risked a glance at Will. His eyes were closed again and he had his head tilted back so the sun hit his face. Nico had seen him so many times but he still managed to find new things to appreciate about him every time. Today it seemed to be the freckles dancing across the bridge of his nose. Nico wanted to run his finger across them and count then. Will was unfairly attractive. How could a guy like him ever want someone like Nico? Nico didn’t care. Nico had to tell him. Otherwise, his feelings would eat him alive.

“Will?”

“Hm?”

Nico twisted his ring wildly. “There’s a campfire tomorrow, you know.” He blushed. Obviously Will knew that. “I know I freaked out the last time you asked, but I did want to go, and so now I was wondering if… you know…”

Will pressed his lips together in an attempt to hide a smile. “If I wanted to go with you?”

Nico’s face had to be as red as a firetruck. “Uh. Yeah.”

Will looked over at him and smiled wider than Nico had ever seen him smile. The butterflies in Nico’s stomach exploded. “Yeah. I’d like that a lot.”

Nico let out an audible sigh of relief. Will chuckled. Nico shoved his shoulder, nearly throwing Will off the dock.

“I’m not good at this, okay?”

“What, asking people out?”

He rolled his eyes. “Well, yes. But also people in general. They don’t make sense.”

“Do I make sense?”

Nico smiled a bit. “You make the least sense of all.” Will laughed. The sound made Nico melt. 

“You intrigue me, di Angelo.”

“And you’re a dork.” Will didn’t look the slightest bit offended. Nico’s head buzzed. The water kept lapping over their feet. 

“Nico?” Nico looked over at him. “If I hold your hand are you gonna run away and/or summon an army of skeletons to eat me?”

He smirked. “No, I don't think so. Is it for medical reasons?”

Will laughed. “I think it’s for crush reasons.”

Nico smiled. Before he could lose his nerve, he threw his hand into Will’s and laced their fingers together. Will’s hands were as warm and soft as they always were, and Nico very quickly realized that he never wanted to let go.

“You know, Solace, maybe you aren’t so bad.”

The other boy smiled and scooted a little closer. “Yeah. You’re pretty cool yourself.”


	12. Solangelo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No trigger warnings! Please read my sappy thing at the end!

Will was supposed to come by his cabin at 8:30, and Nico had no idea what to do. He always struggled with killing time. Everyone else was busy playing capture the flag, an activity that was still blacklisted for him thanks to Will. Nico was getting sick of pacing around. Pacing let him think and overthink way too much. As his watch ticked closer and closer to 8:30, he started thinking more and more. Around 8, he had rummaged through his drawers trying to find something semi-attractive to wear. No dice. Around 8:15, he had tried messing with his hair to make it look a little bit presentable. He only succeeded in making it worse. Around 8:25, he tried rubbing his face in a desperate attempt to bring some color into it. Absolutely no result. At 8:27, he flopped back onto his bunk in defeat.

This whole idea was stupid. Sure, Will had seemed down with the whole ‘date’ thing yesterday, but he had had ample time to reconsider and had probably decided not to pick Nico up. Nico couldn’t blame him. Someone as perfect as Will shouldn’t go for someone as messed up as Nico anyway. Will had probably only agreed to go on this date with him as some sort of appeasement, that is if he showed up at all. Nico was a pity case, plain and simple. A lump was forming in his throat. If Will showed up and he was crying, he’d never hear the end of it. Nico supposed he shouldn’t care; Will wasn’t going to show up anyway. He glanced over at the Mythomagic set still set up on the other side of the room. Maybe he could pretend he was eleven again and play by himself. At least then he wouldn’t bother anyone.

A knock at the door yanked him out of his thoughts. Nico’s eyes flew open and he laid there for a second trying to calm his racing heart. The butterflies sprang to life in his stomach. 

Even in the dark, Will looked annoyingly good-looking. He had exchanged his scrubs for a Camp Half-Blood t-shirt. He was smiling in that same dumb way he always did when he saw Nico, only this time it seemed borderline giddy. It made Nico’s knees weak. 

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

The butterflies did a tap routine. “I, uhm, I’m kind of terrified.” In normal circumstances, Nico would have wanted to kick himself for admitting that. The child of death wasn’t supposed to be scared, but he was, and he and Will were past the point of hiding things like that from each other. 

Will laughed a bit. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m kind of scared too.” His smile faltered. “You wanna just skip?”

“No!” He said it with too much intensity and force, but Will smiled at his blush.

“Alright. I’m down to try and go if you are. You ready to go?” Nico hesitated for a second, then nodded. Everything seemed so surreal. How was he lucky enough to be going on a date with Will Solace?

“How was capture the flag?” Nico asked after a couple of seconds of silent walking.

“Pretty good. We were on Athena’s side tonight, and we won. The Nike campers were not happy at all.” Nico laughed a little. “And there was a surprisingly few number of injuries for the last game of summer. A couple cuts needed stitches and one kid got a concussion, but I didn’t have to reattach any limbs." 

Nico smirked. “I pity the campers who have had to have you attach a limb.”

Will feigned offense. “Hey, just because you don’t see me as a ‘real doctor’ doesn’t mean that I’m incompetent.”

“I’m kidding.” He glanced over at Will, savoring the way his smile looked in the moonlight. “You’re probably a great doctor. You kept me from dying, after all.”

Will’s smile faltered for a second. Nico froze, thinking he had overstepped some unspoken boundary, but before he could apologize the smile had returned. They stopped about a dozen yards from the amphitheater. The sounds of laughter and chatter echoes through the nearby forest. Will turned to face him, and for a minute Nico thought he was going to kiss him. His eyes were stuck on Will’s lips, only to be dragged away by Will’s laughter.

“You thinking about something, Death Boy?” The nickname in combination with Will noticing his staring made him blush.

“Shut up.”

Will smiled down at him softly. “I’d really like to hold your hand again, if that’s okay with you.”

Nico wanted to say that there was nothing in the world that he would like more, but he did have to consider all the people who would be at the campfire. He hated people looking at him. This would give them a great reason to stare.

“I...Uh….” He looked at his feet. 

“No pressure,” Will said quickly. Nico peered up at him, expecting an angry or disappointed expression, but finding nothing of the sort. “I know this is different and hard and all. I totally get it if you don’t want to.”

Nico glanced towards the campfire again where Chiron was smiling at a couple of younger campers chasing each other with sticks. Any remaining bravery crumbled. “Yeah, maybe not. I’m sorry. Maybe a little later?” Will nodded. “You aren't mad at me?”

Will made a strange face akin to shock. “Of course not. Why would I be mad at you for something like that?” Nico shrugged, briefly casting his eyes back to the ground. He didn’t really have a reason.

“Shall we?”

Nico let Will lead him into the amphitheater. As his eyes darted from camper to camper, he realized that he hadn’t been to a campfire like this in a long time. He enjoyed avoiding as many things with lots of people as possible. If he was completely honest, the idea of a campfire made him a little uncomfortable. Nico vaguely remembered loving his first campfire after Percy had brought him and Bianca to camp, but he had never really enjoyed any of them after that, aside from when the Romans left. Other people were clearly surprised to see him there at all. Campers he didn’t really know watched him curiously. Jason and Piper waved. Percy grinned and tried to shout something before Annabeth smacked him.

Partially because he was getting anxious and partially because everyone was staring at him anyway so he didn’t have anything to lose, Nico grabbed Will’s hand. The other boy’s steps faltered a bit, but he smiled and kept walking. Nico swore he could see a blush on his cheeks. 

Will led them to an empty area next to Cecil and Lou Ellen. They were sitting as high up as they could, which Nico appreciated because it meant that no one could stare at them from behind. Cecil muttered something to Will as he passed, and Will flipped him off. Lou Ellen cackled with joy.

“Don’t worry about them,” Will assured him. “They’re just being stupid.”

Nico peered at Lou Ellen over Will’s shoulder. She was staring at them with a grin so big that Nico thought her cheeks would rip in half. “Do they know?”

He shrugged. “Lou Ellen has been bugging me about you since you showed up to Half-Blood Hill in that floral shirt. And Cecil is just annoyingly intuitive. Lou Ellen also probably blabbed to him.” They watched Lou Ellen wave at Nico in innocence. “Do your friends know?”

Nico glanced at Jason. He was grinning in their direction too. “They sort of sensed something when you stopped by the other day. Apparently you make me smile too much for me to be inconspicuous.”

“Aw. I make you smile?”

He blushed. “Just because I’m holding your hand doesn’t mean I will hesitate to summon a skeleton to kick your ass.”

Will smiled at him and squeezed his hand a little tighter. “I know.”

Chiron stomped his hoof down by the fire. Conversations slowly died down. Chiron looked out across the mob of campers and smiled. 

“I will admit that this has been the most eventful summer for our camp in all the years I’ve been here.” Murmurs rippled through the crowd, some more optimistic than others. “An eventful summer can mean that the counselors have a difficult time in picking what should go on our beads, but this year, everyone was in agreement. That rarely happens.” Nico could have sworn Chiron’s eyes shot over to where most of the Ares cabin was sitting.

Nico glanced at Will. Since Nico was the only one in his cabin, he often forgot that he was technically a head counselor. He wondered if Will had been a part of the bead meeting during one of the times Nico had been passed out in the infirmary.

“Counselors, if you could come and get the beads for your cabin.”

Nico had to stop himself from gasping when he saw the design on the beads. While Will was busy passing out beads to his campers, Nico studied the bead and tried his best not to cry. It was half purple and half orange with a small Athena Parthenos painted in the middle to split the colors. Nico would never have expected the thing he and Reyna and Hedge had brought back to camp to be the centerpiece of this summer’s beads. That seemed like a lifetime ago.

Will nudged Nico’s knees with his. “I got you a cord. I, uh, didn’t know if you had one.” Nico blinked. 

“Oh. Thanks.”

Will wasn’t buying Nico’s poker face. “You okay?”

Nico nodded tentatively. “I think so. I’ve just never gotten a bead before. I’m never really around long enough.” He glanced at the bead again, his throat burning. “And I didn’t expect this picture on it.”

Will took his hand again. Nico was afraid that if he looked at him he’d start crying. “It’s alright. You deserve it.”

“What if no one else sees it that way?” 

“Who cares?” Will asked as he shrugged. “Everyone who matters knows. I’ll always look at this bead and think about the badass guy who saved the camp while wearing an amazingly out of character shirt.” 

That made Nico smile a little. “You’ve gotta stop mentioning that. The memory ruins my aesthetic.” Will beamed. At some point in their conversation, Will’s thumb had started running back and forth across the back of his hand, making Nico’s skin buzz.

“Hey, Solace!” Nico turned to see Travis and Connor making their way over to them. He let go of Will’s hand on instinct. He immediately missed the warmth. The Stoll’s smiles grew mischievous as they came closer. The tips of Nico’s ears were hot. 

“Here’s the thing you wanted from town,” Travis said as he handed a nondescript package to Will. Will nodded his thanks as he took it but didn’t say anything.

Connor glanced between Nico and Will. “It’s about time you two stopped dancing around each other.” Nico glared. He wanted nothing more than to shadow travel away and drag Will with him, but he knew Will would kill him if he did. 

“Are you two gonna give out the beads or what?” Cecil called. “As much as you hate it, you do have somewhat of a responsibility here.”

Travis rolled his eyes and turned to him. “Yeah, yeah, we’ll get you your beads.” He started walking back towards where most of his cabin was sitting. Connor winked at Will and Nico before following his brother away.

Will grabbed Nico’s hand again. He looked more uncomfortable than Nico thought he would. Then again, even though Nico had grown up thinking his attractions to guys were immoral, Will had been the one bullied for it.

“Sorry,” Will said as his hands picked at a piece of tape on the package. “I thought people wouldn’t say anything. Gods, I’m sorry I dragged you here, with all the people and—”

“It’s fine.” Will stared at him in a doubtful manner. “This was my idea this time, remember?” Nico squeezed his hand. “And they aren’t being mean about it. They’re just…” He couldn't think of the right word. He wasn’t good at being comforting. Will saw his confused expression and smiled a bit. Nico decided to change the subject.

“What’s in the package?”

Will blinked as if he had completely forgotten about it. “Oh. It’s for you actually.” Nico stiffened a bit when Will put the package in his lap. He hadn’t opened a gift in a long, long time. 

“What did I do to deserve a present?”

He shrugged. “I just felt like getting you something. Felt like it might be useful to you.”

Nico eyed him warily, but opened the package anyway. It was a new jacket. A bomber jacket, to be precise. His mouth fell open a bit. “What—”

“You always used to wear an aviator jacket but it got destroyed on your trip with the statue, right? I figured you might want something more substantial to wear than that sweatshirt, especially when it gets colder.” Will waited for Nico to have some sort of a reaction. “I can have them take it back if you don’t like it.”

“No, I love it.” He hoped it was too dark for Will to see his blush. “Thanks.” Will held the jacket for him while he pulled off his sweatshirt. The jacket fit him perfectly. Will reminded him that he didn’t really need to wear a jacket since it was still summer. Nico responded by shoving his shoulder. 

The campfire continued around them, but Nico felt like he was in his own little world with Will. They listened to some of the people talking and sang some of the songs, but Nico managed to never take his eyes off Will. The more they talked as the night went on, the more Nico wanted to stay there and talk with him forever. The giddy feeling was growing, making him fidgety and unable to form sentences without stammering through them. At some point he had tucked himself in Will’s side and Will had wrapped his arm around him without hesitation. Nico couldn’t remember the last time he had felt this happy. People kept glancing back at them, but Nico didn’t care. All his attention was on Will. As far as he was concerned, that was the only thing he needed to pay attention to.

Will was beautiful. Nico had noticed it before again and again, but now that he could stare at him without being afraid that Will would catch him and run off, he was able to fully appreciate it. His golden hair, his sky-blue eyes, his freckles, his cheekbones.

He was so different from Nico. Somehow, that only made Nico want him more.

Halfway through the second-to-last song, Will turned to him. He was smiling like an idiot. His eyes made Nico’s heart skip a beat. 

“Nico?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Will.”

“Can I kiss you?”

Nico started shaking. He had imagined this scenario in a dozen ways, but he hadn’t really thought he was ready for it to actually happen until Will had asked. Now it was all he wanted. He gave a quick nod, and then Will’s lips were on his. 

It only lasted a second, but in that second Nico’s head exploded. The butterflies in his stomach sprang out into all the rest of his body. His face must’ve shown his shock and happiness because Will laughed a little bit. 

“Was that okay?”

Nico couldn’t answer. His lips tingled warmly as if Will had raised his body temperature by a couple of degrees. He wanted to kiss him again more than he had ever wanted anything else. He wanted to tackle Will and kiss him until his chest was screaming for air, but there were so many people. He shouldn’t care, didn’t want to care, but a part of him still did. Will kept staring at him, his features slowly morphing into something slightly scared. Nico’s words still wouldn’t work. 

He remembered the Chapel of Bones, and his father’s words echoed in his head: ‘My children are so rarely happy. I would like you to be an exception.’ At the time, he hadn’t known what to make of it. Now he did. Will made him happy. He wasn’t going to care what anyone else thought. 

For so long, Nico had hated his life. He hated being a demigod, he hated being Hades’ son, he hated being himself. Regret and loneliness seemed to be the only things that were consistently present in his life. When Percy had come back to camp without his sister, Nico had resigned himself to a horrible life. Each year it only seemed to get worse. Until he met Will. If Will could make him just a little bit happier, make life just a little bit more worth living, then Nico wasn’t going to pretend anymore.

He put his hands around the back of Will’s neck and pulled him in again. 

At first, no one seemed to notice. The singing kept going around them. The campfire kept crackling. Then Nico heard a gasp that could only have been Percy’s, followed by a squeal. The singing died down. Nico curled his fingers into Will’s hair, fighting his instinct to pull away since that was the last thing he actually wanted to do. The singing morphed into silence, and then into cheering. He felt Will smile against his lips. 

When he pulled back, he and Will were both grinning. Nico was blushing wildly, but he didn’t care. He and Will’s foreheads rested together as if separation would destroy them both. Giddiness filled the air between them. The whole camp was clapping and cheering. A few people whistled. A voice that sounded like Jason’s yelled “Solangelo!” Soon his shout became a chant. Solangelo echoed through the camp and into the woods and across the sound. The campfire had changed from gold to pink, sending flames so high in the sky that Nico figured the Gods would be able to see them from Olympus. 

For the first time in months, maybe years, Nico laughed without fear. 

For so many years, Nico had had no direction in his life. He still wasn’t sure exactly where this new direction would take him, and he was certain it wouldn’t be easy, but Will was definitely supposed to be the first step on that path. He knew that with certainty. And that path started now.

He linked Will’s hand with his and turned to face the cheering crowd.

There couldn’t have been a better way to end the summer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so it ends... Thank you to everyone who has been keeping up with this story. I'm normally extremely hesitant to share my writing, so it's nice that this story has gotten some good feedback. I've thoroughly enjoyed posting this and seeing the feedback (I've been locked in a hotel for two weeks per New York's rule). This is my first ever fanfiction, as well as the first story I've ever completed, so this will always have a special place in my heart. 
> 
> Let me know if you want an epilogue, and I may just give you one.
> 
> Thanks again, and bye for now.


	13. Epilogue: It's Gonna Be Alright

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Trigger warning* Mentions of past self-harm, scars, weight, weight gain

Nico knew he should be caring about the training he was supposed to be getting back to or the fact that anyone could walk in asking for Will’s help, and he definitely should be caring about the campers that kept disappearing, but Will’s hands on his waist and in his hair were incredibly distracting. Will’s lips were even worse, with the way they were moving over his lips and his jaw and his neck. Will’s touch worked like the Lethe, making him forget everyone and everything besides the butterflies in his stomach and the buzzing of his skin. He and Will had kissed hundreds of times since September, but Nico’s nerves still lit up like Christmas lights every time. He would have been kidding himself if he thought he could keep a rational train of thought with Will kissing him the way he was. 

“Will?” The medic hummed against his throat, making Nico gasp underneath him and tug a little harder at Will’s hair. Will let a faint groan slip out of his mouth. Nico had to actively work to keep himself in control.

“I thought this was supposed to be a doctor’s appointment.” Will kissed further down his neck, giving a little extra attention to the spots he knew Nico liked. The rational part of Nico’s brain wanted to smack him. The turned-on part of him dug his fingers into Will’s back and threw his head against the pillow involuntarily. 

“It is a doctor’s appointment,” he nuzzled Nico’s neck, “Darling.” Darling. That stupid nickname that made Nico weak every time Will said it. The first time he had said it, Nico had blushed do profusely that he made Will leave his cabin. As far as either of them knew, it was the only thing Will could do or say that completely unraveled Nico. It made the effects of Will’s kisses seem like ripples on water compared to a tsunami. Will used it whenever he wanted Nico to stay with him. It worked 70% of the time. 

Nico suppressed a shiver. “Oh, yeah? If it’s a doctor’s appointment, then why am I going to leave here with more bruises than I came in with.”

Will placed one last kiss on Nico’s collarbone before propping himself up on one elbow. His hair was messed up from all the times Nico had run his fingers through it or pulled at it. His cheeks were dusted pink. His crooked, cocky, adorable smile made Nico want to grab the collar of Will’s scrubs and pull him back down. Yep, Will Solace was still the most attractive guy in the world. One of Nico’s hands slid around to rest on Will’s chest. He could feel how wildly Will’s heart was beating, and it pleased him. It was good to know that Nico drove Will crazy too. He liked seeing the way Will dropped out of doctor mode in the span of three seconds. Watching the way Will came undone made Nico feel needed and wanted, and he loved it.

“Oh, come on, that’s hardly fair. I gotta make up for those couple of weeks I missed over Christmas, right?” Nico smirked a little. Will had gone back home for Christmas and New Years, leaving Nico at camp to catch up on at least 20 movies on the Big House’s VHS system. Will had offered to take Nico with him, but Nico had declined. He was certain that he wasn’t ready to meet Will’s family, and even after 4 months of recovery, he wasn’t sure how he would handle the whole Christmas-dinner-family-meal thing. Since Iris messages were still wonky and cell phones were still a bad idea, the two of them hadn’t talked for two weeks. The absence seemed to have driven Will crazy. Ever since he had gotten back, he had dragged Nico into every available corner to kiss him. Nico didn’t really mind. It only got annoying when he had things to do or when there were people around (that’s when he would hit Will). Will would stop if Nico ever told him to, and then he would get really flustered and apologize profusely. Nico would be lying if he said he didn’t like the attention from him. He was glad their relationship had progressed past Nico getting attention for being sick. 

“Besides, you were the one who started this today.” Nico blushed, then rolled his eyes in an attempt to hide it. Will scooted over to lay next to him, grinning that grin that meant that he was proud of whatever he had said. Will was right, as much as Nico didn’t want him to be. As soon as Will had led Nico up to the exam room, Nico had pushed Will onto an empty cot and was kissing him. He couldn’t help it. Will had smiled that stupid smile he always smiled and suddenly, yeah, making out with Will sounded a lot better than getting weighed. Percy and Jason would never let him live that down if they found out. Luckily, they weren’t here, and if either of them asked Nico about Will, he would send skeletons after them.

Nico snuggled up under Will’s arm. “Whatever. I was gonna say I missed you too, but you ruined it.”

Will pouted. “Not fair. Not my fault you’re so in love with me.”

Nico turned, opening his mouth to give Will some smartass response, but Will’s eyes sucked away all his thoughts. Nico didn’t think he would ever get enough of them. Not only were they the best shade of blue that Nico had ever seen, but they were constantly shifting and changing. The pattern in his irises reminded Nico of stained glass in cathedrals. Whenever he looked into them, he felt so safe and trusted and loved. If you ever wanted to know what Will was thinking, all you had to do was look at his eyes. Right now, his pupils were as wide as saucers. The smile below had spilled into his eyes.

“You’re such a dork,” Nico muttered. 

“And you love me for it.”

“Hm.” It was almost three in the afternoon, but Nico would have been fully content to fall asleep right there in Will’s arms. They were strong and comforting and made every worry go away.

But he had come here for a reason, and that reason wasn’t to make out with or cuddle Will. 

“Doctor’s appointment, Tesoro. Make sure I’m eating and not at risk of another heart attack?”

That sobered Will up a little. With only a couple of complaints he got up and went to get his clipboard.

“It’s not fair that you yell at me for saying ‘darling’ but you get to say ‘tesoro’ whenever you want.”

Nico rolled his eyes as he sat up. “’Tesoro’ doesn’t make your brain stop working.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I think I do.”

Will smirked at him over the top of his clipboard. “Guess we’ll have to test it out sometime.”

Nico’s stomach shot into his throat. His brain sorted through a series of scenarios. Will dragging him into the infirmary supply closet. Him and Nico in the Hades cabin, Nico pressed against the back of the door. A chorus ‘darlings’ and ‘tesoros’ every time. Nico bit his lip. 

“I’m getting on the scale,” he announced. “Weigh me if you want.”

Even after four months, stepping on the scale made Nico nervous. There had been a few times that Nico had seen the number and been sent reeling. Once, the number had been enough to make Nico relapse hard. He even managed to skip a couple of meals before Will could get him back into a semblance of normalcy. He was getting better at wrangling in his emotions, at fighting the screaming that still erupted in his head, but his defense mechanisms weren’t foolproof. The day he looked at the scale and genuinely didn’t care needed to hurry its ass up as far as Nico was concerned. 

“It’s gonna be alright,” Will reminded him just like he did every time. “I’m here if you need me.”

Nico grumbled something that wasn’t words and stripped off his jacket, not ignoring the way Will started at his arms. Irritation flashed through his veins, more because he was anxious than because he actually cared. 

“Honestly, Will, do I have to start getting one of your siblings to do these check-ups?” He watched something in Will’s composure shift at his tone. 

“You’re right. I’m sorry.” He started moving the scale weighs around, filling the room with familiar shinks and clanks. “It’s hard to take off the boyfriend hat sometimes.”

He sounded so defeated that all the fight drained out of Nico. “It’s okay. I’m just anxious. You know how I get.” Will nodded, but didn’t say anything. The empty air would’ve given Nico time to panic if Will’s eyes hadn’t lit up like Christmas trees.

“115.”

Nico stared numbly at the scale. “No way.”

“Yes way.” Will had gone from looking somewhat forlorn to downright giddy in two seconds. “You hit the goal weight, Nico!”

Goal weight. The words put a somewhat bitter taste in his mouth. He knew Will’s goal for him had always been 112, but Nico had never really thought he would get there. He had relapsed and taken steps back so many times. On top of that, Nico was almost certain he had lost weight while Will had been away. For once it hadn’t been on purpose—he had simply forgotten about eating since he had been so involved in his movies—but Nico figured it would have an effect. Apparently it hadn’t. The 115 was burned into his retinas now. To his surprise, the number didn’t make him want to run to the bathroom, but it also didn’t make him happy. 

Before he could vocalize any of these thoughts though, Will had crushed him into a hug. 

“I’m so proud of you,” he muttered into the top of Nico’s head. Nico let himself melt into Will. He brought his hands up to rest between Will’s shoulder blades. Will had hugged him and held him dozens of times, but Nico could never get over how perfect the two of them together felt. He leaned forward until the side of his head was pressed to Will’s sternum, savoring the sound and feel of Will’s heartbeat. A couple of tears slipped from the corner of Nico’s eye. He made no effort to try and stop them.

When Will pulled back, he was still smiling. Nico was still crying slightly, but he giggled a little when Will placed a tiny kiss on the tip of his nose.

“You doing alright there, Death Boy?”

Nico hiccupped, blushed, and tried to hide in Will’s chest again. Will chuckled and pushed Nico back by his shoulders.

“You’re allowed to be upset by the number,” he explained softly, running his thumb over Nico’s cheekbone. “And if you are upset by it, we should talk about it. Talking is the only way anything can change.”

Was Nico upset? He didn’t really know. He was glad about a lot of things: Will’s reaction, the fact that the weight meant that some part of him was getting better, the knowledge that he wasn’t going to die from this. Still. There was a small part of his head that was upset. Nico wanted to smother it, but he couldn’t. He studied Will’s face. His eyes were happy, but weighed down by a little bit of concern. His smile had dulled a little, but Nico could still see how happy he was. He liked making Will happy. It wasn’t enough to get him to not care about his body, but it was enough to make everything a little better. 

He let himself smile a little. “I don’t know exactly how I feel, but I’ll let you know when you figure it out. I’m not going to run away, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

That answer seemed to satisfy Will, at least for now. He smiled, scribbling the updated weight on Nico’s chest. Nico knelt to pick up his jacket.

“You always worry about how I’m feeling,” he said, facing away from Will. “How are you doing?”

Will stopped writing. Even though Nico asked him this question every day, he could tell it still freaked Will out. A month into them dating, Will had relapsed and cut one day. Will had said that it wasn’t caused by anything specific, just a build-up of too much stress in one week and too few opportunities to go to the archery range. Nico wasn’t upset or disappointed in any way that Will had done it, but Will had hidden it from him for almost a week, and that made Nico mad. He had only found out because Will had been so dissolved in making out with Nico that he hadn’t noticed Nico’s fingers skimming underneath his shirt until it was too late. Will had cried, and Nico had cried, and Nico had made him promise to tell him the next time. It was clear that Will was still somewhat uncomfortable with talking about himself though. Nico could tell that Will trusted him more than anyone else, but breaking through the steely head-medic-counselor persona was hard for both of them. 

“I’m pretty good,” Will said after a minute. “I’ve had some thoughts with Cecil disappearing and all, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.”

Nico chewed on the inside of his cheek. He knew he should take Will’s word for it, but it was hard. He’d been gone for two weeks. Cecil was missing. Besides, Will would do the same for him…

“Can I see?”

Will sighed, clearly more at himself than at Nico, but he nodded. Nico stepped close enough to him that he could have kissed Will with nothing more than a shift onto his tiptoes. Will was tense, but he didn’t protest when Nico slid his hand under his shirt. Nico’s hands knew exactly where to go to find the scars. Will stiffened when Nico ran his thumb over the ones from October. 

“Will?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I…” Nico swallowed, not believing what he was about to say. “Can I kiss them?”

Will’s eyes widened considerably. “Uh, I guess. If you want to.” 

“I only want to if you’re okay with it,” Nico amended, moving his hand out from under Will’s shirt. 

Will’s eyes looked glazed. “I… I don’t have anything against it, it’s just that… Well, no one has ever seen them before.” Nico didn’t really count that as an answer, so he kept staring, watching the way Will’s irises shifted with anxiety and hope. Will tried for a smile. “I trust you. Go for it, if you want to.”

Smiling faintly, Nico led Will back over to the cot they were on earlier. Will’s breaths grew deeper as if he were trying to calm himself down. Nico waited for him to lie down and lift up his shirt on his own accord. He didn’t drop his eyes down from Will’s face until he had affirmed with Will that this was okay, but when he did, he fell in love all over again. 

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Nico realized that he had never seen Will without a shirt. Technically, Will still had his shirt on, but it wasn’t doing much bunched up at his collarbones. Nico wanted to stare, to take in and fully appreciate the sight of his perfect Will, but he didn’t want to make him uncomfortable. As much as he wanted to, he didn’t stare at Will’s abs or his pecs or his perfect skin. He shifted his eyes to the collection of scars on Will’s left side. Given how carefully Will did everything else, Nico was almost surprised to at how different they looked from each other. He could imagine Will tearing at his side with reckless abandon, and it made him want to cry. He traced his fingers over them one more time before lowering himself down and pressing his lips to one of them.

Will gasped and Nico withdrew quickly. He leaned back, moving to climb off, but the other boy grabbed his shoulders. 

“You don’t have to stop,” Will said. “I’m fine. I promise. It just surprised me is all.”

When Nico’s lips made contact a second time, Will didn’t make a sound. Nico made a point to kiss every scar, especially the ones he knew were the newest. One of Will’s hands drifted into Nico’s hair and nestled itself there. Will’s skin was hot against Nico’s lips, just like all his touches were. 

“Do you remember what you told me that day in the woods?” Nico murmured against Will’s side.

“Uh…” Will was clearly distracted. “Something about me caring about you?”

Nico laughed a little. “Yeah, but I wasn’t talking about that. You said that you didn’t think about me any differently because of my problems, and that I didn’t matter any less or deserve any less.” With each new sentence he kissed another scar. “That’s all true for you too. I don’t think about you any differently because of these scars. You didn’t choose this. You aren’t any less of a person because of them, and you don’t matter any less or deserve any less than anyone else because of them.”

He placed a final kiss on the scar closest to Will’s collarbone. “You’re a lot of things, Will Solace, and brave is definitely one of them.”

Will shifted a little. “That’s my line.” Nico looked up at him to throw some comforting/smart-ass comment back, but Will was staring down at him with lost eyes. Anxiety began to pool in Nico’s stomach as he thought about what he had just done, what he had said. He was about to apologize when Will grabbed his face and pulled him in for a kiss.

They had kissed a lot in the past few months, but this one felt totally different. Nico could tell Will was pouring everything he had into the kiss, all the anxieties and fears and wishes he had always carried around but never said. Nico was doing the same. He had never felt as trusted as he did in that moment, and it was wonderful.

Nico’s jacket was on the floor before he could process everything. Will’s shirt had joined it at some point, and now Nico really could spend time running his hands over Will’s stomach, his chest. In that moment, Nico didn’t care about exactly what they were doing. He just knew that he was on top of his incredibly hot boyfriend and that he did not intend to stop kissing him anytime soon. He was very glad that it wasn’t the forties anymore.

After what could only have been an eternity, Nico pulled back, partially so Will could wrestle his shirt off and partially because breathing was important. Will held Nico’s hips and stared up at him. Nico was suddenly aware that he was shirtless in front of Will in a very different manner than he had ever been before. Will had never studied Nico like this for so long. It made Nico a little nervous. But then Will’s hands were running across his torso tracing the lines of his muscles and Nico decided that he was not going to care about his body right then.

“Nico di Angelo,” Will murmured as he slid his hands up and down Nico’s back. “I love you.”

Nico expected himself to shut down when the words left Will’s mouth, but he didn’t. Instead, he placed another searing kiss on Will’s lips.

“Gods, I love you too.”

What would have happened next, Nico didn’t know, because at that moment the door swung open. Nico cursed and twisted off of Will as quickly as he could. He felt his face turn at least seven shades redder. Where had Will put his shirt?

Kayla stood in the doorway with her arms crossed. Her expression was a strange mix of amusement, disdain, and annoyance.

“Can’t you guys find anywhere else to hook up that isn’t the infirmary? There are other people here you know.” She looked pointedly at Nico, who was struggling to turn his shirt right-side out. “You literally have an empty cabin.”

“Uh…”

“What do you want Kayla?” Somehow Will had already found his shirt and had pulled it back on. Nico found himself a tad disappointed at the disappearance of Will’s abs. He blushed harder. 

“A: I need to know where to find more Tylenol. B: Chiron wants to talk to you for a minute. Something about preparations for the three-legged death race.”

Will groaned. It was no secret to Nico or anyone else how much Will despised all of the Hephaestus cabin’s obstacle courses.

“You would think Paolo getting his arms sawn off would have been enough for Chiron to at least make Harley tone it down,” he grumbled. He ran a hand through his hair, attempting to mitigate the effects of Nico’s fingers running through it. 

“There’s probably some Tylenol in that cabin.” He gestured vaguely behind him, pointing to about three different cabinets. “I’ll be right back,” he promised Nico, giving him a quick kiss on the forehead. He turned to Kayla. “Don’t bother my boyfriend.” Nico rolled his eyes at the term.

Kayla looked unamused. “You’re so lucky I needed Tylenol. If Chiron had come in here and seen that he would’ve had a heart attack.” Will left the room doing a bad impersonation of his sister’s voice in an attempt to mock her. Nico was busy trying to ignore the fact that Kayla had seen him half-naked on top of her brother when she cleared her throat.

“You make him really happy, you know.” Nico looked up, hoping his blush had died a little. Kayla was digging around in a cabinet. When Nico didn’t answer, she kept talking.

“Will has been uptight ever since I met him, but after Michael and Lee, it was like some fundamental part of him went missing. It’s coming back now, thanks to you.”

Nico wondered if Kayla and the rest of her siblings knew about Will’s scars. Part of him had always assumed they did, but the other part knew how private of a person Will was. He supposed it didn’t really matter. Will had always seemed so easy-going. He still seemed that way, even if he was more stubborn and annoying than previously thought. Nico had no clue why Will being with him could help bring back the old Will since all he did was brood, but Nico wouldn’t pretend that he hadn’t noticed some sort of shift. Since September, Will had started to chill a little. He could still be wickedly focused when he needed to be, but it seemed to be getting easier for him to place the doctor part of himself and the kid part of himself into different spheres. He was definitely becoming more open, more vulnerable. He had gotten easier to read. Nico thought back to a minute ago when he was kissing Will’s scars. A fundamental part, Kayla had said. Trust.

Losing a family member was familiar territory for Nico. He knew how little you learned to trust when you realized that people could be taken away from you in the blink of an eye. He knew that trust got extra hard when you had larger, deeper, darker secrets to share. It made Nico happy that Will had decided to try and trust him. He was glad he was helping Will too, and that the support wasn’t just a one-way road.

“I’m glad,” Nico said finally. “I’m glad I can repay him, I guess.”

Kayla stood and turned towards him, a bottle of Tylenol in her hand. “Just please. When you too feel like getting it on, please do it far away from me.”

Nico’s face caught fire again. “I… We… It’s not…” She arched an eyebrow at him. Will saved him by bursting back through the door.

“I love Harley as much as the next guy, but when is someone going to sit him down and say, ‘Hey, man. Us demigods spend enough time trying not to get killed, so could you maybe chill out with the serrated death frisbees?’ Chiron’s making us prepare a makeshift infirmary out in the yard and—” He stopped as if suddenly aware of the awkward energy in the room. His eyes shifted between Nico and Kayla a couple times before they decided to focus on Kayla.

“I told you—”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever, I’m leaving. My shift is starting now anyway.” She left the room without another word, leaving Will to stare at a very nervous Nico.

“Sorry,” Will said. “She’s annoying and stubborn.”

“It’s almost like she takes after her big brother.”

Will crossed his arms. “How is it that you can go from hot and sweet and practically whimpering on top of me to insulting me in two minutes?”

“Special skill.” Nico grabbed his jacket off the floor. “It isn’t my fault that you’re so easy to tease.” He had to make somewhat of a conscious effort not to look at Will because he knew that if he did, there was a good chance he would crack and try to kiss him. Will was too cute for his own good.

“Oh, shut up.”

Nico smirked. He stood up, shuffling closer to Will until he was definitely in his personal space. Will stared, waiting for him to say something, but Nico was fully content to do nothing but look at him. 

Finally, Will broke eye contact, huffing in an annoyed tone and shoving Nico’s shoulder. “You’re awful. I hope you know you annoy the Hades out of me 80% of the time.” There was no malice behind his words. Nico smiled a little.

“And yet, you stick around.”

Will’s lips curled into a smile. “Yeah. I do.”

“Probably couldn’t keep yourself away anyway.”

“No. Probably not.”

At some point in their exchange, Will had moved his hand to rest on the side of Nico’s face. He moved his thumb back and forth across Nico’s cheekbone. Nico would never admit it, but each time Will’s thumb moved over his skin, a lightning bolt shot down his spine.

“As much as I would love to stand here and stare at you forever, Chiron is making me set up for this death trap. He’s sending me and Argus and Austin into the city to pick up some more supplies.”

Nico pouted a bit. “Aw. Any chance I could tag along?”

Will smirked, and shook his head. “You know Chiron’s already annoyed by the table thing. Let’s not push it. I’ll be safe. I promise.”

“I know you will be. Just don’t do anything stupid.”

Will kissed Nico’s forehead again and smiled. The two of them started to walk through the house, Will leading Nico to the front door with their hands intertwined. Chiron had apparently decided to let a little bit of snow into the camp, because the grass was covered in a fine layer of snow. Nico dissolved a little more into his jacket. 

“I’ll pick you up for the campfire later?”

Nico nodded. “Yeah. When is it again?”

“I don’t know. Five or something?”

Nico laughed. “Yeah, ok. Why is it so early?”

Will shifted. “Chiron’s afraid of us being so near the forest at night with all the disappearances. Plus, a lot of the afternoon is clear since there’s only a dozen or so of us.”

“Fair. Ok. See you then. Good luck in the city.” Nico leaned up onto his tiptoes and gave Will a quick kiss on his cheek. Will blushed, gave an awkward bow in his direction, then bounded down the steps. Nico watched him go until he disappeared over the crest of the hill, smiling at the thought of seeing him again in few hours.

“I miss Venice,” Nico mumbled into his jacket. “Venice was warm. Venice didn’t have snow.”

Will popped another uncooked marshmallow into his mouth. “Oh, come on. It’s not that bad.”

“I’m from Italy. This is cold.”

“And I’m from Texas. It’s cold, but it’s fun.” He shoved at Nico’s shoulder. “You could wear a better jacket than just the bomber.”

Nico grimaced. “I refuse to be a snowman. Or a marshmallow.”

“Hey, marshmallows are great.” Will handed him a skewer with a couple of them stuck on the top. 

“I don’t want a smore. I’m too cold.”

“Then make me one, doofus. Making a smore means you have to get closer to the fire. More fire equals more heat.” 

Nico took the skewer begrudgingly. 

“How was the city?” he asked after a minute or so of silently glaring at the fire. 

Will finished chewing on a graham cracker. “Fine. The Walgreens seemed confused as to why we were buying so many packages of bandages and stuff, but there weren’t too many questions asked.”

Nico smiled a bit. “You should have brought me some McDonald’s back.”

“That’s not healthy.”

“Neither are smores, but you don’t have a problem with those.”

“Smores aren’t fried.”

Nico opened his mouth to say something else, but Will’s mouth fell open. Nico turned in the direction of Will’s eyes just in time to see the trees bending. Several campers around them were already standing. Nico’s hands flew to his sword instinctively. A figure appeared from the trees—no, two of them. As they got closer, Nico could make out that one of them was a girl a few years younger than him. The other was harder to make out since he was being dragged by the girl, but it was definitely a guy. They were fifty yards away. Twenty. Ten. 

The boy looked up, grinning and giggling. “Oh, hi! I’m Apollo!” His eyes rolled into the back of his head and he crumpled like a leaf. The girl tried her best to keep him upright, but he was a lot bigger than she was. He slid to the ground. The girl was panting heavily and muttering to herself. Will, being the one who happened to be closest and the head medic, sprinted towards him. Nico followed from a respectable distance, sword ready in case something stormed out of the woods. 

“Who are you?” Julia Feingold asked, pointing her weapon at the girl. 

The girl didn’t flinch. Nico appreciated that. “Meg.” She poked at the guy on the ground with her foot, which earned her a glare from Will, who was trying to feel for his pulse. “And he told you who he is.”

“There’s no way he’s actually Apollo,” Malcolm said, staring. “We haven’t heard from the gods in months. One wouldn’t just drop out of the sky.”

Meg’s eyes glinted angrily, as if she was used to people not believing her and hated it. “Well, he did. Literally. He fell into a dumpster. I saw it.” She looked at Will. “Is he dead or not? He’s kind of supposed to be my servant for a while.”

Will looked ready to throw up. His face was greener than Nico had ever seen it. His hands shook almost imperceptibly, but Nico knew Will well enough to recognize the way his hands were twitching. “Austin, gimme a hand here? We’ll take him back to the cabin.” The two of them dragged a still very unconscious Apollo to his feet and started carrying him away from the campfire. Nico backed up as they moved to pass him. As they did, Will grabbed Nico’s sleeve. 

“I’ll meet you at the Big House when he wakes up, okay? I’ll make sure someone tells you.”

Nico wanted to follow, but he swallowed down the urge. As it was, he watched Will’s blond covered head disappear towards the rows of cabins, as confused and as worried as he had ever been. His life was most assuredly about to get a lot more interesting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's that epilogue (finally). School is kicking my butt (yay for being a photography major) but I'm really glad I got to write this. Writing calms me down and I've missed having the interaction with readers and stuff. 
> 
> I'd really like to write some more stuff at some point. If I come up with an idea, maybe I'll write a sequel to this that goes into the Trials of Apollo, but who knows. I'm also up for writing some one shot stuff unrelated to this if anyone has any nice Solangelo one shots they wanna read. 
> 
> Thanks again for reading. Hopefully you'll see some more writing from me at some point. Comment and all that jazz if you want. :)


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